<b>Sabas Review - Peace ship in floundering animation</b>

T.Sabaratnam

Peace process has withstood another watery test. If on that Saturday night something more serious had happened, the peace ship would have most likely floundered.

Like all events, Iranaitivu confrontation too has two sides, (1)Navy’s and (2)LTTE’s.

Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission’s (SLM) version came out first and because neutral Nordic monitors were involved and SLMM Chief Major General Trond Furuhovde castigated the LTTE, the incident received global coverage.

LTTE’s side of the story, released later, unfortunately, failed to receive similar treatment.

This column, sticking to the noble tradition of journalism, will endeavor to be impartial and present both sides of the story.

The incident, both sides agree, occurred in the Iranaitivu sea, near Mannar, on Saturday around 5 p.m.

Navy says it sighted the two LTTE boats and they ordered them to halt. Navy in its statement failed to say, what the LTTE’s boats were doing?

But, the LTTE statement says that, one of its trawlers was fishing at that time. LTTE added that the Navy’s gunboat SLN Dvoras fired at its boat, causing damage and later rammed the trawler. SLMM statement was silent about these matters.

LTTE says that it crew had contacted its commander on shore and he had sailed in another trawler to find out the situation. The LTTE commander found three SLN Dvoras surrounding their trawler and demanding the crew to disembark and hand over the boat into their custody. Tigers had declined to do that and the LTTE commander invited the two monitors who were in the gunboat flying the SLMM flag and the naval officers to inspect the trawler.

Two SLMM monitors and three navy personnel got into the trawler, searched it for an hour and found only the communication sets, a matter in which both statements concur. LTTE says the monitors had declared there was nothing that, they consider as unlawful and one of the monitors with the concurrence of the navy officials told the Sea Tiger commander to proceed. Then one of the naval officers told the LTTE commander that, he had been instructed by navy headquarters to take the trawler to Kankesanthurai. The Sea Tiger commander refused, saying that they had not breached the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

LTTE’s Political Chief, Thamilselvan, who had signed the LTTE letter addressed to the SLMM says: “While this was going on in the SLN Dvora boat with the SLMM flag , two other Dvoras kept circling our trawler. The three SLN personnel, who were in the trawler jumped into the sea and swam across to reach their boats.”

”Since the three SLN boats were ramming against our trawler continuously, our regional commander … decided to sail back to the shore. The SLMM monitors were given assurance of their security and brought ashore. This information was passed on to SLMM headquarters and they were picked up by the SLMM vehicle,” Mr. Thamilselvan said.

“We consider this as very serious violations of the [ceasefire agreement], more so in the presence of the SLMM monitors and [an SLN vessel] having an SLMM flag,” Mr. Thamilselvan said:

SLMM statement issued earlier said that the monitors found communication equipment on board the trawler, and had suggested that the LTTE cadres would be allowed to go ashore and the trawler taken into the custody of the navy. The LTTE leadership and the LTTE cadres on board refused to disembark from the trawler.