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Committed to political solution: Sri Lanka

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama on Thursday maintained that the government does not believe in a military solution to address the genuine grievances of the minority communities in the island nation and is firmly committed to a political solution to the ethnic conflict.

At a briefing of the diplomatic corps based in Colombo on the decision of the Sri Lankan government to ban the LTTE, he said the acts of terrorism by the LTTE and its orchestrated campaign to collect funds to commit acts of terrorism and its activities relating to the procurement or smuggling of arms, ammunition and explosives, had the potential of adversely affecting international and regional peace and the security and law and order of other sovereign nations.

He told the diplomats that the decision by India to proscribe the LTTE and renew the ban periodically also stems from the threat that the LTTE poses to the territorial integrity of India.

The Minister referred to the repeated calls by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the LTTE to renounce terrorism and come to the negotiating table.Minister Bogollagama, commending the statement of the U.S. Embassy in Colombo issued in the aftermath of the fall of Kilinochchi, pointed out that the U.S. government does not advocate that the government of Sri Lanka negotiate with the LTTE, a group which has been designated by the U.S. since 1997 as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.

Separately, the Sri Lanka military claimed to have captured a number of bases of the LTTE close to Elephant Pass and in the Mullathivu district. Defence Ministry said that soldiers had captured Soranpattu village.

It said that earlier in the day, troops captured the Pallai township.

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