Sri Lanka Marks Independence, Says Rebels Face Defeat

By Paul Tighe

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Sri Lanka, marking the 60th anniversary of independence from Britain, said Tamil rebels are fighting their last battle and two bombings at the weekend that killed more than 30 civilians demonstrate their desperation.

Security forces ``have reached the last phase in eliminating terrorism from our nation,'' the Media Center for National Security said in a statement today. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam group ``is fighting its last battle'' after being driven from the eastern region.

The government blamed the LTTE for a blast on a bus that killed 20 people two days ago and an attack by a female suicide bomber on a train in the capital, Colombo, in which 11 people died yesterday. The LTTE hasn't commented on the attacks.

The Tamil Tigers now hold bases only in Sri Lanka's north after losing control of the Eastern Province in July. The LTTE has been fighting for 25 years for a separate homeland in the South Asian island nation, a conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people.

Terrorism is facing an ``unprecedented defeat'' in Sri Lanka, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in an Independence Day speech today.

``The Sri Lankan nation had to live with fearsome experiences of the terrible tragedy and cancer of terrorism for three of the six decades since independence,'' Rajapaksa said, according to an e-mailed statement.

Training Base

The bus blast took place at Dambulla in north-central Sri Lanka and the suicide bomber blew herself up in Colombo's Fort Railway station yesterday, the Defense Ministry said.

Security forces arrested 17 Tamil civilians in a search operation in Colombo after the train attack, TamilNet reported on its Web site, citing unidentified police officials. As many as 300 houses were searched, it said

Sri Lanka's air force last week attacked an LTTE jungle base in the northeast used to train suicide bombers. The government said a bomber killed three people in the city of Jaffna on Jan. 31.

A female suicide bomber blew herself up, killing one person, in an attack inside the offices of Douglas Devananda, the minister for social services, in Colombo, on Nov. 28. A parcel bomb exploded the same day in the city's Nugegoda district, killing 18 people.

Political Settlement

Sri Lanka's government says it wants to reach a political settlement on the issue of Tamil separatism while eradicating terrorism in the north.

It says it won't consider any peace settlement that would divide the country of 20 million people. Tamils make up 11.9 percent of the population and Sinhalese almost 74 percent, according to a 2001 census.

An all-party forum has proposed creating an interim council in the Northern Province under a power-sharing agreement based on a 1987 constitutional amendment creating provincial councils.

``We selected a solution which can be implemented and about which we have experience,'' Rajapaksa said in his address today. ``This practical solution is to bring the provincial administration closer to the people within the framework of our constitution.''

The LTTE, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and India, rejected the amendment in 1988, saying it left too much power with the national Parliament.

The government is trying to find a durable solution to the ethnic problem through democratic means, the Media Center said in its statement today.

``Our independence struggle was not waged for one community, one group or one party alone,'' it said. ``That struggle was carried out collectively by all communities together, including the Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher and Malay peoples.''

Source: Bloomberg