U.S. to declare Tigers terrorists: Minister
U.S. to declare Tigers terrorists: Minister
COLOMBO (Agencies): The United States plans to declare Sri
Lanka's Tamil Tiger guerrillas as terrorists, a move that will
lead to freezing the rebels' foreign assets, a senior minister
said here yesterday.
Justice Minister G. L. Peiris said the U.S. authorities had
told him, during his recent visit to Washington, that the Clinton
administration was preparing a list of terrorist organizations
worldwide.
"I have been told that the LTTE (the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam) will no doubt be included," Peiris said, adding that
Canada and Germany were contemplating similar action to block
foreign funding for the Tigers.
U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said recently
that the Clinton administration considered the LTTE to be
"ruthless and vicious terrorists."
"As a general rule, the United States itself certainly will
not have productive relations with any terrorist group," Burns
said.
The LTTE has already warned that Washington's diplomatic and
military support of Colombo would "expand" the civil war, which
has claimed more than 50,000 lives in the past 23 years.
"American arms are being sold to the Sri Lankan government
since it withdrew its earlier stand of not selling lethal weapons
to Sri Lanka," an LTTE publication said.
The LTTE is leading a violent guerrilla campaign for
independence in the island's northern and eastern regions and
have been accused of devastating attacks against civilian, as
well as military, targets.
In August, the U.S. sent a high-level team here to discuss
counter-terrorism after describing the LTTE as a terrorist
organization. However, the Tigers are yet to be formally declared
terrorists.
The U.S. team led by ambassador Philip Wilcox, co-ordinator
for counter-terrorism in the state department, said terrorism
could not be excused for political reasons and must be treated as
an unmitigated crime.
Sri Lanka maintains that the LTTE funds its military
activities through extortion in western nations where there is a
considerable expatriate Tamil community.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government yesterday removed
censorship of news on the country's ethnic war, imposed on the
domestic media earlier this year.
"The censorship is lifted with immediate effect," Media
Minister Dharmasiri Senanayake told a news conference.
The censorship was imposed just before government forces
launched the final phase of their offensive to oust Tamil Tiger
rebels from their northern Jaffna peninsula stronghold.
The army completed the takeover of the peninsula, 400
kilometers north of Colombo, in April but the censorship
continued despite repeated protests by the media.
The end of censorship follows the capture late last month of
Kilinochchi, the last major town controlled by the LTTE, which is
fighting for an independent homeland for minority Tamils in Sri
Lanka.