Word: lanka
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...massacre bore all the hallmarks of the guerrilla group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and came almost exactly one year after Indian troops launched their offensive to disarm the Tigers. Indian soldiers had arrived in Sri Lanka in July 1987 to help implement an Indo-Sri Lankan agreement that gives the minority Tamils a greater measure of autonomy. But militants on opposite sides of the bloody Sri Lankan conflict united in rejecting the agreement...
Although the pact would grant the Tamils some self-rule by combining Sri Lanka's northern and eastern provinces, where they are in the majority, the Tigers insist that it does not go far enough. Sinhalese extremists led by the People's Liberation Front (J.V.P.) object that the accord gives away too much. . The two chief candidates campaigning to replace retiring President Junius Jayewardene, 82, in a December vote are opponents of the agreement, and have vowed to send the 70,000 Indian troops home...
...resistance" against the provincial election. More in fear than in sympathy -- the J.V.P. has in the past year murdered some 450 supporters of the accord -- most of the Sinhalese population cooperated. The strike marked the second time in a month that Sinhalese rebels have paralyzed Sri Lanka, reinforcing the impression that Jayewardene is losing control of a nation many fear is on the brink of anarchy...
...Thailand afflicted with many of the tensions that have brought down paradisal Asian escapes like Sri Lanka and the Philippines. On the map, the kingdom is ringed by countries that sound ominous: the People's Republic of Kampuchea, the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. Yet the land itself, for all its cyclone-cycle coups, is a pocket of relative calm and one of Washington's surest friends: the more the government changes, the more the monarchy stays the same...
When India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sent extra troops to Sri Lanka early this month to help end fighting by the island's Tamil separatists, the assumption was that the operation would be relatively quick and painless. After all, India's soldiers outnumbered the roughly 2,000 members of the ragtag Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam more than 3 to 1, and had the backing of Sri Lankan President Junius R. Jayewardene. But the offensive dragged on, offering little hope that the guerrillas will give up their four-year battle for an independent Tamil homeland...