The Sri Lankan government said Thursday that it has notified the Norwegian government about its decision to terminate the ceasefire agreement with Tamil Tigers, which means the nearly six-year truce will formally expire on Jan.16.
Sri Lanka's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that this notification was in terms of the agreement signed in February 2002 and will take effect 14 days from the date of this notice i.e. Jan. 16, 2008.
"The government of Sri Lanka today formally notified the Royal Norwegian Government of its decision to terminate the agreement ...concluded on Feb. 22, 2002," said the ministry in a statement.
The statement said the agreement on the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) between the Norwegian government and the Sri Lankan government will also be terminated on Jan. 16.
As the final authority on the interpretation of the ceasefire agreement, the SLMM was established in 2002 to inquire into reported violations of the agreement.
The SLMM originally consisted of members from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland.
From Sept. 1, 2006 its members came from Iceland and Norway as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) insisted on the exclusion of monitors from EU countries which banned the LTTE as a terrorist organization.
The SLMM said Thursday in a short statement that following the Sri Lankan government's decision, "the SLMM will terminate its current operational activities in Sri Lanka effective Jan. 16."
The Sri Lankan government made the policy decision to withdraw from the ceasefire agreement on Wednesday after an Army bus was attacked in Colombo by suspected LTTE rebels Wednesday morning, killing four people and injuring 24 others.
According to the ceasefire agreement, it will be annulled 14 days after either the government or the LTTE informs the Norwegian government that it decides to withdraw from the agreement.
Government defense spokesperson Keheliya Rambukwella said earlier that the government has taken the decision because the Norwegian facilitated agreement failed.
"The attempts made so far to have a negotiated settlement with LTTE terrorists could bring no favorable results," Rambukwella said.
He said the government sees no point of having any attempt to come to a settlement with a terrorist outfit as the government is already in a negotiation process to address grievances of Tamil people with democratic Tamil political segments.
Both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE have been accused each other of blatant violations since the truce came into force.
The government and the LTTE held eight rounds of talks after signing the ceasefire agreement, but failed to find a political solution to the island's long drawn-out ethnic conflict.
More than 5,000 people have been killed as the conflict between the government and the LTTE began to escalate in the end of 2005, making the Norwegian brokered ceasefire agreement exist only on paper.
Claiming discrimination at the hands of the Sinhala majority, the LTTE has been fighting the government since the mid-1980s to establish a separate homeland for the minority Tamils in the north and east.
(Xinhua News Agency January 4, 2008)
