Word: sri
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...acres of razor wire. Colombo's quaint commercial center is clogged with police checkpoints. President Chandrika Kumaratunga lives there; having survived an attempted assassination bombing three years ago, she's not taking any chances. In fact, there's little to fear. Nobody worries about bombs going off in Sri Lanka these days. You can travel just about anywhere on the island: to the northern peninsula of Jaffna or to the eastern beaches near Trincomalee, areas that were off limits for most of the past 19 years of civil war. The government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE...
...Twelve months is a good long time to breathe easier, but Sri Lanka isn't out of the jungle yet. After five rounds of highly productive peace talks?in which the LTTE formally abandoned its goal of secession?the two sides are only now facing the core issues that will make or break a deal, including a rewriting of the Sri Lankan constitution and the delicate issue of when and how the fanatical Tigers will hang up their suicide suits, dispose of their cyanide capsules and surrender their guns. As a result, Sri Lankans are living in unaccustomed security...
...Some 30,000 Sri Lankans who fled their homeland in the 1980s and '90s came back on visits last year to see if the place was livable again. But foreign investors have been less eager to return. "We need to sign a document with the LTTE," sighs Arjunna Mahendran, chairman of the government's Board of Investments. "That's what people are waiting...
...acutely aware that talks could be long-winded: he often cites the failed peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. "What I'm trying to do," he says, "is move it fast this year to make it irreversible." Wickremesinghe is hoping that a year of normalcy will convince Sri Lankans on both sides of the ethnic divide that these talks, unlike many in the past, must succeed. "It became clear the LTTE could not throw the Sri Lankan armed forces out of the North and East," he says. "Neither could the armed forces crush the LTTE. It was a stalemate...
...tuks. Mostly it's spare parts and repairs." Even if local demand is falling, Thailand remains the world's foremost exporter of the three-wheelers, shipping up to 5,000 new and second-hand tuk tuks a year to neighbors such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. "People all over the world are interested in tuk tuks," Anuwat says. "They buy them for novelties or for transport vehicles, garbage trucks, ice-cream vans." Another big manufacturer, Asian Quality Company, is exporting a VIP tuk tuk to Egypt and Europe, mainly for use at resorts. It costs...