‘Grave Setback’ for Sri Lankans

Sri Lanka’s government said today that 12 minority Tamils had been arrested overnight in connection with the slaying of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar.

Raids in and around the capital, Colombo, netted 11 men and one woman, said Brig. Daya Ratnayake, spokesman for the Defense Ministry.

“They are being interrogated, but at this moment of time we don’t want to say anything,” Ratnayake said.

Officials blamed Tamil Tiger rebels for the slaying, but the group said it was not responsible. The government warned that the assassination could rupture the island’s fragile peace process but said it had not taken steps to break a cease-fire.

Kadirgamar, 73, an ethnic Tamil who led efforts to ban the Tigers as a terrorist organization but later backed peace efforts, was shot in the head and chest late Friday after a swim at his home. He died after midnight.

Police said one or two snipers had fired at him through a hole they had made in a nearby building.

The Tigers began fighting in 1983 for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. The civil war killed nearly 65,000 people before the Norwegian-brokered cease-fire in 2002.

Subsequent peace talks broke down, however, over rebel demands for greater autonomy in areas they control in eastern and northern Sri Lanka.