Tamil Tigers Warn of Return to Civil War in Sri Lanka

The Tamil Tigers have warned of a return to full-scale civil war in Sri Lanka, of the kind last seen in the late 1990s, after the government scrapped the shattered ceasefire last week.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) insisted they wanted to continue the 2002 truce despite the assassination on Tuesday of a government minister.

In its first reaction to the government's decision last week to formally scrap the ceasefire, the LTTE threatened "full scale war" if the government tried to invade its territory.

Speaking to Reuters, S Puleedevan, head of the LTTE peace secretariat, said: "If full-scale war is thrust upon us, we will face it and the Sri Lankan armed forces will face the same fate that they faced in 1997-1998."

During that period, tens of thousands of people were killed in some of the bloodiest fighting in the history of the conflict.

Puleedevan also accused the government of "beating the war drums".

"If they go for full-scale war, then the LTTE also will face it," he said.

Later the LTTE political leader, B Nadesan, said: "We are shocked and disappointed that the government of Sri Lanka has unilaterally abrogated the ceasefire agreement signed in 2002."

He added the group were "ready to implement every clause" of the Norway-brokered truce and respect it "100%".

Despite his comment, the Tamil Tigers have been blamed for series of violent incidents including the roadside bomb that killed the government minister DM Dassanayake, on Tuesday.

Violence from both sides has escalated, since last week, killing 172 people, according to the military.

Sri Lanka's government officially notified Norway on January 3 it was pulling out of the ceasefire, saying the growing violence over the last two years had rendered the agreement irrelevant.

The truce becomes formally invalid on January 16 when Norwegian peace monitors have been asked to leave.

The LTTE said it wanted the monitors to remain.

"It must be underlined that this agreement with the LTTE was seriously flawed from the very inception," foreign minister Rohitha Bogollagama said last week.

The Norway-brokered deal had been considered the best chance of a permanent end to the violence and received widespread international support.

But near-daily ambushes, assassinations and air strikes have killed more than 5,000 people in a resurgence of violence over the last two years.

More than 70,000 people, many of them civilians, have been killed since the Tigers began fighting for an independent state for the ethnic Tamil minority in 1983, claiming discrimination by the Sinhalese majority.