Tamil Tigers announce cease-fire for summit

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Sri Lankan rebels said Monday that a new round of peace talks on ending the country's 25-year-old civil war is impossible as long as the government presses ahead with a military offensive.

But they announced Tuesday that they would observe a unilateral cease-fire during a South Asian summit to be held in the capital, Colombo, at the end of the month.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa said earlier this month he was prepared to restart long-dormant talks with the Tamil Tiger rebels if the group lays down its arms and ceases bombings and other attacks across the country.

Balasingham Nadesan, the head of the rebels' political wing, said Rajapaksa's conditions were "naive" and "impractical" and there was no way the two sides could negotiate while the fighting continued to rage.

"It is impossible to hold peace talks when one party, the government of Sri Lanka, is undertaking large-scale military offensives," he told The Associated Press in an e-mail interview from the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi in the north.

While they rejected the peace talks, the rebels declared they would observe a cease-fire from July 26 until August 4, saying in a statement the gesture was a sign of goodwill to other countries in the region. However, if the government attacks them, the rebels will respond, the statement said.

Presidential spokesman Lucien Rajakarunanayake said the military would end the offensive if the rebels disarmed.

"The government offensive is to eradicate terrorism from the country. If there are signs terrorism is not functioning, then there is no problem," he said.

The government has claimed a series of military victories in recent days against the rebels. Troops seized an important coastal base used by the rebels' naval wing last Wednesday and pushed deeper into the north Sunday, taking control of a rebel base in the village of Illupakadavai.

However, Nadesan said he did not consider the offensive a threat to the rebels' fight for an independent homeland for the country's ethnic Tamil minority.

"We have always used many different tactics and strategies to deal with such offensives," he wrote. "We have repeatedly demonstrated our ability to convert the Sri Lankan government offensives into our favor."

The Tamil rebels have been fighting for an independent state in the nation's north and east since 1983, following decades of marginalization by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

A 2002 Norwegian-brokered cease-fire broke down 2 1/2 years ago amid new fighting. The government seized control of the Eastern Province from the rebels last July.

In January, it officially pulled out of the cease-fire, expelled Nordic truce monitors and promised to crush the rebels and capture their de facto state in the north by the end of the year. Senior officials have recently said the fighting was going more slowly than expected and they might require more time to oust the group.

The military said Monday that new fighting in the north killed 40 rebels and one soldier.

While not commenting directly on that fighting, rebel spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan accused the government Monday of wildly inflating rebel casualty numbers while underreporting its own.

It was not possible to independently verify the military reports because the government has barred most journalists from the northern jungles where much of the fighting takes place. Journalists are also barred from traveling to rebel-controlled territory.

Nadesan said the fighting had displaced about 150,000 people in rebel-held territory. Many of the recently displaced people lack adequate food, shelter and clean water, he said.

"People are staying under trees and on the sides of paths. Schools and temples have been converted into refugee camps," he said. He accused the government of blocking the import of items needed to help the displaced people.

Human rights workers have privately accused the government of preventing the movement of some essential items, including cement and gasoline, into rebel-held territory.

Rajakarunanayake denied that accusation. "That is totally incorrect," he said.

Nadesan, former head of the rebels' police force, was made the Tamil Tigers' political chief after his predecessor, S.P. Tamilselvan, was killed in an airstrike last year.

The group has been responsible for hundreds of bombings and other attacks on civilian and military targets throughout the country. It is listed as a terror group by the United States, EU and India.

When asked if the rebels remained committed to attacks inside government-held territory, Nadesan said they had not changed their position.

"Our forces will undertake any military actions that are needed to evict the occupying Sri Lankan armed forces from our homeland," he said.

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