Sri Lanka Rejects Tamil Tigers Truce Offer

Sri Lanka has rejected the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels' latest offer of a ceasefire, saying that the guerrillas would have to lay down their weapons before any truce would be considered.

With rebel forces trapped and out gunned by the army on a sliver of the island's north-east coast measuring just 34 square miles, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) made a last-gasp international call for outside nations to step in to halt the fighting.

In a letter to the United Nations, the Tamil Tigers' political chief, Balasingham Nadesan, said international pleas for the rebels to disarm are "not helpful for resolving the conflict … (weapons) are the protective shield of the Tamil people and their tool for political liberation."

The LTTE had sent a similar message to the United States, the European Union, Japan and Norway, which brokered the last ceasefire, saying the international community should enforce a truce "so the miseries of the Tamils ... are brought to an end".

Over the weekend the United Nations' top humanitarian official, John Holmes, appealed to both sides to spare innocent civilians trapped in the war zone. The UN estimates an estimated 250,000 people are caught in the fighting and need food and medicine.

But the Sri Lankan military said it would accept nothing short of an unconditional surrender. "The LTTE must lay down arms and automatically there will be a ceasefire," military spokesman, Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, told the Guardian. "There is no shift in our position … We have been through ceasefire agreements for 30 years and learned many lessons."