‘War will continue if LTTE keeps fighting’

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has declared that the ongoing war with Tiger guerrillas will continue until they are defeated. If they want the Security Forces to stop the war, he told Richard Boucher, the US Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam should lay down arms and come for peace talks. Otherwise, the Government was willing to hold peace talks while fighting Tiger guerrilla terrorism, he said.

During talks with President Rajapaksa, Mr. Boucher had expressed US Government's concerns over human rights violations and media freedom, particularly intimidation and threats to journalists. Dealing with human rights, Mr. Rajapaksa said some of so-called complainants of human rights abuses, it had come to light, were not in Sri Lanka but living abroad.

With regard to media freedom and threats to journalists, the President gave Mr. Boucher the copy of an interview in a Sunday Sinhala weekly given by Upali Tennakoon, President of the Editor's Guild of Sri Lanka. In that Mr. Tennakoon had declared that there were no threats to journalists from the Government. He had said that the threats were from UNP and Opposition leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe.