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Sinking of ship violated cease-fire: LTTE
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has claimed that last Monday's Navy striking of their tanker took place 220 nautical miles off Trincomalee and claimed it is a violation of the Cease-fire Agreement with the Government.

The LTTE position is contained in a letter their political wing leader, S P Tamilselvan wrote yesterday to Defence Minister, Tilak Marapana. It was in response to the latter's letter sent to them on Tuesday.

The letter says:
"I received your letter dated 11 March 2003. We wish to express our great displeasure and dispute the feeble arguments you advance to justify and legitimize the unwarranted and impulsive action taken by the Sri Lankan Navy in attacking and destroying our merchant vessel on the international waters.

Your proposition that the LTTE vessel was carrying 'warlike material' is an imaginary conjecture based on the false and the distorted version of the report presented to you by the naval authorities. The destruction of the vessel and all its crew members have given the navy the golden opportunity to frame charges as they wish since the victims (both the sailors and the ship) have no voice and are buried deep in the bottom of the sea. We wish to point out that the captain of the unfortunate vessel reported to us that the SL Naval gunship opened offensive fire and set the tanker on fire without any provocation on their part.

We are surprised to note that your response to our protest over the incident failed to mention the location of the incident. This is a crucial factor since the incident took place 220 nautical miles off Trincomalee. There is a notable discrepancy over the version of the SLN with regard to the location of the incident. Finally, the navy has concocted the location within the economic zone of 185 nautical miles.

Surprisingly your Government fails to recognize the fact that there is a Cease-fire Agreement and that clause 1.3 of the MoU forbids the SLN to enter into combat with the LTTE. Furthermore, the SLN has also failed to solicit the assistance of the SLMM in handling this affair. We consider this incident a grave violation of the truce agreement by the SL Navy and are awaiting the final determination of the SLMM."

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