CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

SRI LANKA ASKS ASEAN FORUM MEMBERS TO HELP POLICE MARITIME BORDERS FROM LTTE DRUG AND GUN RUNNERS

By Walter Jayawardhana

Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama has asked Asean Regional Forum (ARF) to help his Indian Ocean island republic to police its maritime borders to prevent smuggling of people , drugs and weapons by the terrorist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

Bogollagama told reporters in Manila at a press conference that the LTTE also known as Tamil Tigers in 1995 sent weapons to Abu Sayyaf an Islamic militant group in Southern Philippines through contacts with an Al Queda cell based in Pakistan.

He said the LTTE continued to move weapons in and out of country in its fleet of small boats possessed by their marine wing called Sea Tigers and the Sri Lanka Navy was able to destroy some of them .

Bogollagama asked Asean Regional Forum members, especially India, China, Australia, Japan and the United States to help his country to protect its maritime borders from the LTTE violators.
During its 14th annual sessions in Manila Sri Lanka has become the 27th participant of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum after which the Foreign Minister addressed the press conference.

He said the Tamil Tigers have attacked ships of merchant navies and pirated them. Those attacks could damage the global economy, he said. He said the LTTE attacks were launched from the land, sea and the sky against Sri Lanka.

Foreign Minister Bogollagama said the Sri Lanka government was ever ready to resume peace talks with the LTTE at any time provided that they were ready to stop violence.
“We can resume talks tomorrow," Bogollagama told reporters at the news conference in Manila but added, "They should stop violence and give up terrorism."

He said the Sri Lanka government never abandoned its resolution to end the conflict with political negotiations but the LTTE lacked sincerity.

But the LTTE has declared it is ruling out peace as long as President Mahinda Rajapaksa is in power. It entered in to a peace accord with the former government of Ranil Wickremesinghe, but the Scandinavian peace monitors said the rebel group broke it thousands of times.

The peace accord they signed still exists on paper but during the last one year 4500 people have been killed due to the continuing war.

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