The road leading from Eravur to Batticaloa is deserted. While it is almost sunset, the only life on the streets is that of STF personnel standing guard every few metres and armed Karuna cadres standing outside TMVP offices.

 

Doors and windows of houses are firmly locked as civilians fear to step out in the dark.

The United Nations has asked Sri Lanka to prosecute ‘to the fullest extent of the law’ 108 Sri Lankan soldiers with the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti for sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of minors, including prostitution, the Sunday Times reported.

 

The number is one of the biggest single withdrawal of soldiers from a UN peacekeeping mission.

Britain should look at trying a Sri Lankan paramilitary commander, arrested Friday for using forged documents, for war crimes, a human rights organisation has urged.

There is such a high premium placed on the Tamil nationalist struggle, human sacrifice is unimaginable. The loss of Tamil cadres, fighters and leaders in the past indicates that such sacrifices are unavoidable in the quest of national liberation.

S. P. Tamilselvan, an internationally respected Peace negotiator for the Political Wing of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was killed by the Sri Lankan Air Force.

 

The Canadian Tamil Congress is profoundly saddened and deeply hurt on hearing this heartbreaking and painful news.

 

Tamilselvan was the chief negotiator for various peace talks with the Sri Lankan state since 1994.

Sri Lanka’s largest Tamil political party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Friday expressed its shock at the killing in a government airstrike of Mr S. P. Tamilselvan the LTTE’s Chief Negotiator and head of its Political Wing and five other LTTE officials.

 

The TNA said the targeted killing of the LTTE’s Chief Negotiator underlined President Mahinda Rajapakse’s insincerity towards a negotiated solution, the TNA also said.

Translated by TamilNet

 

S. P.

Sri Lanka’s main opposition United National Party (UNP) has hailed the killing of LTTE Political Head and Chief Negotiator, S. P. Tamilchelvan, in a Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) airstrike on his official residence Friday as “a victorious moment.”

 

Praising the Air Force, UNP spokesman Lakshman Kireiella said it was not possible to talk peace with the LTTE.

 

Mr.

Hailing the Air Force bombing raid Friday which killed the Tamil Tigers chief negotiator and Political Wing head, Mr. S. P. Tamilselvan and five other LTTE officials, Sri Lankan Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa said his government would kill other LTTE leaders ‘one by one’.

 

Sources said he made his comments, quoted by Reuters, at a celebratory meeting at Temple Trees, the official residence of President Mahinda Rajapakse, who is also Mr.

"We received the very sad news yesterday that S. P. Tamilselvan has been killed in the suburb of Kilinochchi. Anpumani or Alex whom we knew in the facilitation of the negotiation process was also among those who were killed.

S. P. Tamilselvan – who died in a Sri Lankan air force raid on Friday morning – is the most senior Tamil Tiger leader to have been killed in recent years.

 

The death of their media-savvy political wing leader at the age of 40 means the LTTE have lost an experienced and suave political negotiator.

 

For many years S. P. Tamilselvan was the public face of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Almost always smiling, smartly dressed and carrying a polished cane, S.P. Tamilselvan was the key contact point between Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the outside world.

 

Killed on Friday in a government air strike, the leader of the Tigers' political wing was the public face and mouthpiece of the LTTE who met foreign diplomats and reporters denied access to reclusive leader Velupillai Prabhakaran when they visited the de facto capital Kilinochchi.