Word: colombo
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...OTHER NATIONS HELPING? Norway has acted as a mediator, but its efforts to start talks have failed. The U.S., Japan, the European Union and others have sent envoys, but threats to block aid to Colombo and to proscribe the Tigers as international terrorists have had little effect. There is little stomach for more aggressive stances, such as a peacekeeping operation. The last time that was tried?by India in 1987?the Tigers turned on the troops, pushed them out and, in 1991, killed the Indian Prime Minister at that time, Rajiv Gandhi, in a suicide attack...
...himself attacking the Sri Lankan army in 1987. Hundreds followed, and when they signed a cease-fire with the Sri Lankan government in February 2002, the Tigers accounted for around a third of all suicide attacks in the world. A Western diplomat based in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo describes the Tigers as "the most successful terrorist organization in the world...
...Anoja Kugenthirasah, an ethnic Tamil from the village of Poovarasakulam, a few kilometers from the de facto border between government and rebel territory in northern Sri Lanka. Around 1:25 p.m. last Tuesday, Kugenthirasah arrived at the front gate of the Sri Lankan army headquarters in the capital Colombo, produced an identity card, and named an officer she said was her husband. Indicating her bump, she told the guards she was due at the army clinic for a check...
...least 10 people died. On April 27, at least five soldiers were killed in two landmine blasts. The same day, the decapitated bodies of five young men thought to be Tamils-two with their hands tied behind their backs-were found in a ditch near a rubber plantation outside Colombo. The death toll from the past three weeks of bloodletting: around...
...sure, Sri Lanka has had it worse. At the height of the conflict, which has claimed some 65,000 lives, up to 1,000 people occasionally perished in a single day. Jehan Perera, director of the National Peace Council, an independent Colombo think tank, reckons that, in Sri Lankan terms, both sides are showing restraint-neither has launched all-out assaults. "The government knows the only way to stop the L.T.T.E. from killing more soldiers is to meet them at the negotiating table," says Perera. The Tigers, he adds, are keen to shore up their battered reputation with the international...