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The Sri Lanka government on Thursday ruled out lifting a proscription on Tamil separatists, saying that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's assertion that they would settle for autonomy instead of full independence could not be believed.
Urban Development Minister Mangala Samaraweera said the government would not lift the three-year-old ban on the LTTE despite its chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran, announcing on Tuesday that his struggle was neither 'separatism' nor 'terrorism'.
"His statement rings hollow. How can he claim to be a freedom fighter when he has killed thousands of his own people?" Samaraweera, a key government spokesman and confidant of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, asked.
Samaraweera also said that the LTTE would not be recognised as the 'sole representative of the minority Tamils' as demanded by Prabhakaran.
"Prabhakaran is not a (Nelson) Mandela (of South Africa), but a megalomaniac, a cheap third grade terrorist who wants to come to power and have a fascist dictatorship in the north," Samaraweera said.
"However, we are not shutting the door to any talks with the LTTE in the future. At the same time, we have to realise the sort of person with whom we are going to talk to," he said.
The government and the LTTE called in Norway in 1999 to help arrange the logistics for peace negotiations. But the facilitation effort got stalled in June after months of talks between the two warring sides and there is little prospect of an immediate revival of the process.
Sri Lanka will elect a new government on December 5 and the protracted ethnic conflict in which over 60,000 people have died is a key issue that has polarised political parties and public opinion.
Indo-Asian News Service
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