End of the CFA between the Govt. & the LTTE

(January, 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Sri Lankan cabinet today decided to withdraw from the International ceasefire agreement (CFA) which was signed between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on February 2002 under the Sponsor of the mediator Norway, a proposal by Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremenayake , government sources said.

Sri Lankan Government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwela, has confirmed that a cabinet decision to withdraw from the CFA has been taken on Wednesday. But, he did not provide a date for the GoSL withdrawal. The February 2002 agreement, in its paragraph 4.4, specifies that the agreement shall remain in force until notice of termination is given by either Party to the Royal Norwegian Government.

“All the Cabinet Ministers agreed for that and the Premier was tasked to inform the matter to the Norwegian facilitators soon,” he said.

Gotabhaya told a Colombo news paper last week, "So many Governments have signed a number of Ceasefire Agreements in the past since the Thimpu Agreement.

"Once you sign a Peace Agreement and then you come to the next Ceasefire Agreement or whatever agreement, you must abolish the other [previous] one. It had never happened. From the Thimpu Agreement there are so many peace agreements including the Indo Lanka Agreement," Rajapaksa added, the paper said.

He said that the Lankan president can come out with new proposals for resolving the grievances of the Tamil people after the Ceasefire Agreement is abrogated and the LTTE is banned.

"We should not give solutions to the LTTE which is a terrorist organization. The LTTE is just a part of the Tamil people and solutions should be given to the Tamil people," the paper quoted Gotabhaya Rajapakse as saying.

The CFA was thought to be the best chance of permanently ending decades of civil war in the island nation and received widespread international support, especially from the United States, Japan, the European Union and India, but under the present hardliner Rajapaksa government, Sri Lanka’s human rights violation are widespread and the military option was pressed with vigor and CFA only confined to mere paper agreement for last two year.

Heavy fighting has flared between the SF and LTTE for many months in Eastern and Northern Sri Lanka with heavy toll of combatants from both parties. Civilians in the North and East suffered the most casualties but the war is increasingly not confined to North and East of Sri Lanka and threatens the entire island nation.

Many decades old conflicts in Sri Lanka has no military solution according to many International Community governments and dignitaries and repeatedly urging both parties to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Sri Lanka.

The protracted conflicts in Sri Lanka between majority Sinhalese and Tamil minorities have killed at least 80,000 people while half a million people internally displaced and over million people externally displaced.