Amidst mounting international pressure, Sri Lanka on Sunday offered to shelve its ongoing military campaign against the Tamil Tiger rebels and resume talks with them if the rebels were prepared to come for talks, media reports said.
Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who is in-charge of running the current military campaign against the rebel outfit, has told a Colombo-based English newspaper that the government forces would not press ahead with their military offensive if the rebels agree to resume talks.
“We'll not take advantage of the ground situation. The decision is theirs (Tigers) and I believe they wouldn’t reject this opportunity,” the Defence Secretary, who is also the younger brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, has said in an interview with the Sunday Island newspaper. The Defence Secretary’s remarks come at a time when President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is also the Commander-in-Chief and Minister of Defence, has undertaken a visit to New York to address the 62nd UN General Assembly commencing on September 25.
In the sidelines of the UN sessions, President Rajapaksa is expected to hold talks with several world leaders, including the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and US President George Bush to discuss about the prevailing situation in Sri Lanka.
US angle
It was only on Monday that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said in the Eastern Trincomalee district that defeating the LTTE militarily was a pre-requisite to work out any political solution in the island nation.
A notable change of expression by the Defence Secretary on war and peace has surfaced couple of days after US Ambassador to Colombo, Robert Blake said at a function in Colombo that there cannot be a military solution to Sri Lanka’s long-drawn ethnic conflict.
