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`Security measures not lax '

By V. S. Sambandan

COLOMBO FEB. 18. The Sri Lankan Defence Minister, Tilak Marapane, today denied charges that the Government was lax on security and asserted that the state's vigilance mechanism had been strengthened.

Replying to a no-confidence motion brought against him by the Opposition People's Alliance (PA), Mr. Marapane told Parliament that the steps taken by the Government to ensure the return of normalcy in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, since last year's ceasefire agreement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), were "without endangering security''.

The no-confidence motion was defeated by a 42-vote majority, with 84 MPs voting in its favour and 126 opposing. The People's Alliance and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna backed the motion. In addition to the ruling United National Front, the Tamil parliamentary parties — the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance, the two-member Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), which opposes the LTTE, and the Democratic People's Liberation Front (DPLF) — voted against the motion and backed the Defence Minister.

During the year-long ceasefire, there has been a visible decrease in the presence of security forces, particularly in the main cities. "The vigilance has been preserved, though not all that visible'', Mr.Marapane said. The Government, the Defence Minister said, had taken "meaningful action to enhance the capability'' of the security forces who "had not lowered their guard''. The ceasefire agreement, he pointed out, was a commitment made both by the Government and the Tigers to the international community.

On the situation in eastern Sri Lanka, which has a near-equal demographic mix of the island's three main ethnicities — Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims — the Defence Minister said `the main objective'' was to ``resolve minor irritants without allowing them to fester and develop into explosive situations''.

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