Monthly archive

Charles & PrabahAs yet another week ends with no word about the whereabouts of Velupillai Prabhakaran, it is natural for the media to speculate and the gossip mills to go into overdrive on what has happened to him, who has carved out a Robinhood image for himself down the past 30-odd years. A conjecture that has many takers on either side of the Palk Straits is that Prabhakaran is, indeed, dead but his close faithful are maintaining the myth of his invincibility. If this is the case, certainly, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his army chief would have gone to the town with the ‘good news’.

AnandasangareeIn a fervent appeal to save the Internally Displaced Persons trapped in Vanni and held hostages by the LTTE, V. Anandasangaree, President of the Tamil United Liberation Front has suggested that an International Agency, acceptable to the Government, be selected to visit Vanni and persuade the LTTE to allow the innocent people to go out freely, with an offer of a general amnesty to those who surrender with arms. In an open letter to Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa, TULF leader has cautioned that if such an arrangement is not made to bring out the civilians safely, the whole thing will end up in a national disaster detrimental to the good name of the country.

Kosh Raj Koirala – Asian Tribune Correspondent in Nepal

Even as the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) got resounding victory in Constituent Assembly elections held April last and is heading the government since August last, the United States continues to keep the former rebel party in Nepal under terrorist organizations watch list. According to the Country Reports on Terrorism 2008 released by the US Department of State on Thursday, the Maoist’s United Revolutionary People´s Council and the People´s Liberation Army (PLA) are still part of its Terrorist Exclusion List. While the United Revolutionary People’s Council is a political wing of the party, the People’s Liberation Army is the military arm of the party.

While thousands continue to flee the conflict zone in northern Sri Lanka, others have started to return to their homes in former battle areas, and the United Nations refugee agency said today it is sending teams to aid their transition. Some 400 people returned yesterday to a village in the Mannar district, which was for a long time the front line between the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Out of some 3,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have registered to return to 15 villages in Mannar over the coming weeks, as part of the first Government-organized return operation in the embattled northern part of the island nation for many years.

Sri Lanka’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hussein A. Bhaila, addressing the Ministerial Meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana held on Thursday (30 April) urged for a greater international cooperation in combating terrorism. Praising the Sri Lankan security forces for their successful humanitarian operations, which helped rescue more than 150,000 civilians from the clutches of terrorists in the last ten days, the Deputy Minister stressed that the impressive advances made by the Government of Sri Lankan in the North under the leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa heralded the end of the road for terrorism and violence in the country.