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LTTE has breached truce, say sea monitors

Truce monitors in Sri Lanka have taken serious exception to an unauthorised sea journey by two senior commanders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in violation of procedures laid down for such movements.

"The behaviour of senior LTTE leaders is disappointing," Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission spokesman Teitur Torkelsson said. He added that the SLMM plans to lodge a complaint with the LTTE leadership.

One of the two leaders who travelled between Mullaitivu in the north and Vakarai in the east was Karuna, the rebel group's eastern commander, who is now a delegate for the peace talks. The monitors are sore that a high-level participant in the peace talks should be involved in a serious violation.

The other was the Trincomalee commander Paduman. Both travelled with their armed bodyguards on boats that did not have any monitor as required by the existing procedure.

According to agreement between the Sri Lanka Navy and the Tigers, the sea-borne units of the guerrilla group can travel only with ceasefire monitors on board. For this, prior information has to be given to both the navy and the SLMM.

The journey was conducted over the weekend after the monitors had cancelled boat trips due to bad weather and advised the LTTE to wait till the weather cleared. The commanders went ahead with the journey and also returned by the same route on Sunday without any monitors.

Two vessels of the Sri Lanka Navy and monitors on board had observed these unauthorised movements, but did not interfere. "What they [the navy] did was very much in the spirit of the ceasefire agreement," Torkelsson said.

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