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LTTE rebels feel noose tighten

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's armed forces have blocked off a vital lagoon crossing to the northern Jaffna peninsula, tightening the noose on Tamil Tiger guerrillas but still short of choking them, analysts said on Sunday.

Helicopter gunships on Friday destroyed eight Tamil Tiger boats as the armed forces blocked the Kilaly crossing on the Jaffna lagoon.

The lagoon was used by the guerrillas to move from the peninsula, the heart of their would-be homeland, to the Vanni jungle on the mainland.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ran the peninsula like a mini-state for nearly a decade, with their own police force, taxes and currency and tolerated no dissent, analysts say.

Late last year the military took Jaffna town, albeit largely deserted, in what was called Operation Riviresa. This month saw the launch of Riviresa Two in which the army says it has cleared more than half the eastern peninsula districts of Vadamarachchi and Tenmaradchi.

An estimated 250,000 refugees from last year's fighting in the northwestern Valikamam area were returning home, happy to be under army control, the military said.

But to suggest that the return of the refugees and sealing of the lagoon meant the LTTE were being marginalised would be premature, analysts said.

"The war is a long, long way from over," former air force chief Air Vice Marshal Harry Goonetileke said on Sunday.

"The people are not going back to their homes out of love for the army or out of hate for the LTTE. They are going back because of the hardships away from their homes. And they know that with the government's hearts and minds campaign, they will get rations and money and are not going to be harassed."

He also said hundreds of LTTE cadres would be among those returning. "The LTTE are perhaps silently chuckling," he said.

The LTTE have widely ridiculed the military for taking an empty Jaffna town and have given publicity to the sprouting of administrative, business, farming and residential communities in the Vanni, their new headquarters.

They have also vowed never to consider peace talks while government troops are stationed on the Jaffna peninsula.

"There is the prospect of further violence within the territory now controlled by the government," political analyst Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu said in the Sunday Leader newspaper.

"The LTTE will surely not be content to concede larger chunks of populated territory of what they claim should rightfully be Tamil Eelam without guerrilla attack.

"They have to show that the government may take but the government cannot hold because they can and will harass."

Tamil Eelam is the homeland in the north and east for which the guerrillas have been fighting since 1983. An estimated 50,000 people have died in the war.

A western defence analyst said the blocking off of Kilaly, where the LTTE on Saturday said fighting was continuing, was important but that the priority for the armed forces now must be to open a land route to the north.

"The LTTE have their Sea Tigers (naval wing) and the peninsula is surrounded by sea," he said.

The Sea Tigers control coastal waters from Batticaloa in the east up to Point Pedro in the north of the Jaffna peninsula but residents say they have withdrawn from Kilaly.

The number of LTTE cadres in the peninsula have dropped dramatically since the start of the current fighting and many of those still there are hiding among the civilians, residents say.

The army has yet to clear the eastern Vadamarachchi and Tenmaradchi areas, including the Point Pedro port.

Saravanamuttu said the gains by the armed forces in Riviresa Two would be meaningful only if they acted as a catalyst towards finding an all-party consensus on a political solution.-Reuter