Sri Lanka Rejects Rebel Deal; Pivotal Battle Likely

Sri Lanka’s leaders spurned a cease-fire offer Monday that would have allowed them to evacuate thousands of government troops under siege by separatist guerrillas on the Indian Ocean island.

The rejection came hours after the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who are battling for a separate homeland, proposed a halt in the fighting to allow Sri Lankan troops to retreat from the city of Jaffna with “dignity and honor.”

In a televised address to the nation, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga vowed to hold on to Jaffna, the center of the country’s Tamil minority.

“We will not allow the [half a million] Tamil people in Jaffna to fall into the hands of the fascist rule of the LTTE,” Kumaratunga said.

The Sri Lankan government’s rejection of the cease-fire seemed to ensure a bloody fight for Jaffna, where about 40,000 government troops are under attack by Tiger guerrillas. The battle for Jaffna began two weeks ago, when the Tigers overran government positions at the entrance to the Jaffna peninsula. The city sits at the northern tip of the island and is surrounded on three sides by water.

The fight for the city is shaping up to be a pivotal battle in the nation’s 17-year civil war, which pits the majority Sinhalese Buddhists against the predominantly Hindu Tamils. A victory by the Tigers would represent a huge step toward their goal of forming an independent state for the Tamil people.

Jaffna is the cultural capital of Sri Lanka’s Tamil population, which has long claimed discrimination at the hands of the Sinhalese. The Sri Lankan army captured Jaffna from the rebels in 1995, ending five years of Tiger rule there.

Tiger leaders said Monday that a rejection of their cease-fire offer could mean a “blood bath” in Jaffna. The war is already one of the world’s bloodiest ongoing conflicts, with a death toll exceeding 60,000. Tiger suicide bombers have killed hundreds of civilians. Captured troops on both sides are often executed.

“The Sri Lankan government will bear total responsibility for the disastrous consequences of heavy military casualties,” the Tigers said in a statement faxed from their office in London.

In their statement, Tiger leaders said their proposal was a humanitarian gesture intended to spare Sri Lanka’s forces from a massacre. After the cease-fire, the Tigers said in their statement, the two sides could negotiate an end to the war.

“The leadership of the Liberation Tigers has made this decision as a gesture of goodwill to prevent the further escalation of violence and a blood bath,” the statement said.

On Monday, Sri Lankan air force planes bombed Tiger positions at Elephant Pass, the land bridge that connects Jaffna to the rest of the island. Military officials said the army was deploying newly acquired weaponry along the defense line 15 miles southeast of the city.

“There will be no withdrawal,” Sri Lanka’s media minister, Mangala Samaraweera, told the French news service Agence France-Presse. “The military is stepping up operations.”

Government forces still hold the air base at Palali, which provides a critical link to the government-held areas in the south of the island. Sri Lankan officials say that the loss of the air base would isolate the Jaffna garrison and force the government to pull those forces out.

In another development Monday, Indian leaders said they would mediate between the Tigers and the government only if both parties agreed--an unlikely prospect. Indian officials also reiterated their intention not to intervene militarily.

India sent a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka in 1987 but pulled out three years later after a bloody fight with the Tigers left about 1,200 Indian troops dead.

Aid workers said Monday that they feared that Jaffna’s 400,000 civilians could get caught in the cross-fire of the two armies. The fight for the city in 1995 produced tens of thousands of refugees.

“For the moment, our teams will stay in the city and keep working,” said Gabriel Trujillo, coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, an international aid group. “But people are worried. The situation could change at any moment.”