 COMMUNICATION(S) POINT as your Homepage World News Colombo welcomes U.N. message  COLOMBO: Mar 1.- Sri Lanka on Saturday welcomed an appeal by the United Nations special envoy to the world community to influence LTTE to lay down arms and allow civilians trapped in the war zone to move to safer zones. The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry referred to the briefing given by U.N. Under-Secretary General for humanitarian affairs Sir John Holmes to the U.N. Security Council and maintained that the consensus at the Security Council was that Tigers must lay down arms. Sir John visited Sri Lanka on a three-day trip at President Rajapaksa’s invitation last week for a first hand assessment of the ground situation. Officials here maintained that his briefing to the Security Council did not result in a ceasefire call to Sri Lanka from the Security Council. But general agreement that the LTTE must lay down arms and ease suffering of the thousands of civilian trapped by the fighting. Aircraft were on suicide mission: LTTE  COLOMBO: Even as the Sri Lankan government described the Friday night air attack by the LTTE as a “failed stunt”, the Tigers claimed the two aircraft shot down by the military were on a suicide mission and “successfully” carried out attacks on the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Headquarters and the SLAF base at Katunayaka. Pro-LTTE TamilNet quoted a “news release” by the LTTE as saying that two aircraft of “Black Air Tiger” (suicide cadre) were on a “crash mission”. The Tigers released photograph of the two pilots, “Colonel” Roopan and “Lieutenant Colonel” Siriththiran posing with LTTE leader Velupillai Prabakaran “before embarking on their mission”. “Both the Tamileelam Air Force pilots have earlier been decorated with Blue Tiger award for having carried out successful air raids on enemy targets,” the website said. Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa told the media that troops close to Puthukkudiyiruppu, the last remaining LTTE-held town, passed on the information about the two aircraft even before the radars had detected them. “LTTE may have used a straight road in their last stronghold for taking off as the outfit had lost all the airstrips to the troops during the past few months. The Tiger craft flew over Mannar, Wilpattu and came to Colombo. It was their normal route. The troops would have captured the LTTE planes within days and the LTTE had acted before they lost the craft on the ground,” he said. There was no explanation as to how the two lightwing aircraft managed to wing their way from Puthukkudiyiruppu to the heart of the national capital and came within metres of their purported targets. As per the Defence Ministry, each aircraft was loaded with explosives weighing 215 kg but the pilots failed to drop any bomb. It said the two LTTE-improvised Czech-manufactured Zlin-143 aircraft were brought down within an hour of detection by anti-aircraft fire. The Ministry said the first craft crashed into the rear of the Inland Revenue Department opposite the Air Headquarters and the second fell at Katunayake. The pilot of the aircraft which crashed into the Inland Revenue building died after it caught fire. It damaged three storeys of the building, killing two and injuring 45 others, including two airmen. The body of the second pilot was found near the aircraft wreckage at Katunayake. Separately, Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa told visiting U.N. Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Sir John Holmes that his government would cooperate with any moves to have civilians caught up in the war zone released from the LTTE’s clutches. The meeting followed the visit of Sir John to the camps at Vavuniya on Friday. At a news conference, the U.N. envoy said that he was concerned about restrictions on freedom of movement of the displaced and the presence of military inside the camps and urged the government to complete the registration process of the refugees at the earliest. The U.N. envoy appealed to the government and the LTTE to avert a “final bloodbath”. Sir Holmes said “deaths and more injuries” of civilians were taking place daily inside the northern Wanni region. However, he concurred with Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe that it was difficult to make a distinction between the civilians and the Tiger cadres. Sir John Holmes said the U.N. was donating a further $10 million for the welfare of the displaced, in addition to nearly $ 145 million given recently, and said he looked forward to a continuing dialogue between Sri Lanka and the U.N. on the matters affecting the displaced and other related matters. old news |