Amid Violence, Envoys Meet With Tamil Tigers

Envoys from Asia and Europe met with a leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels Saturday, expressing concern that fresh violence could shatter a cease-fire.

The violence continued, with gunmen killing a pro-rebel legislator during a midnight Christmas Mass, and a soldier being shot to death in the Jaffna peninsula, the government said.

Thirteen members of Sri Lanka’s navy were killed and two wounded Friday in an ambush on a bus. The government blamed the rebels for that attack; the rebels denied involvement.

Representatives from Japan, Britain, Norway and the European Union met with Tamil leader S.P. Thamilselvan in a northern guerrilla stronghold, the rebels said.

Thamilselvan assured the envoys of the rebels’ “commitment to the peace process and the cease-fire,” the group said in a statement on its website.

Hagrup Haukland, a Norwegian who heads the 60-member European team monitoring the Sri Lankan truce, said the latest violence has endangered the 2002 peace deal that eased the country’s civil war.

“The cease-fire agreement is in jeopardy, absolutely,” he told reporters.

Legislator Joseph Pararajasingham, 71, was fatally shot at St. Michael’s Church in Batticaloa, eastern Sri Lanka’s main town, military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said today. His wife and eight others were wounded.

The lawmaker’s bodyguards returned fire, but it was not known whether any of the assailants were wounded.

Pararajasingham represented the Tamil National Alliance, a proxy party of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the rebel group that wants to create a homeland for Sri Lanka’s 3.2 million ethnic Tamil minority in the country’s northeast.

A breakaway faction of the rebels is opposed to the alliance.

A pro-rebel website reported the incident without comment.

Violence has escalated in Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil-majority northeast since another rebel leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, threatened to resume his struggle for an independent Tamil homeland if the government fails to address Tamil grievances.

At least 33 government security personnel, including the sailors, have been killed and many more injured this month in attacks blamed on the rebels.

The Tamil Tigers started fighting in 1983 for a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. The conflict has killed about 65,000 people.