COLOMBO Reuter: Three Tamil separatist guerrillas and two soldiers were killed in an attack on an army camp in Sri Lanka’s northern city of Jaffna security sources said.
The rebels fired mortar bombs at the Dutch built for the target of frequent attacks on Saturday night and Sunday.
Sri Lankan newspapers today criticized the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi for his comments at the nonaligned summit on the way the Colombo government is handling the Tamil separatist war.
At a news agency in Harare Gandhi accused Sri Lankan security forces of massacring innocent Tamils and expressed doubts about the government’s sincerity in resolving the conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils.
The government has made no official answer but the Sun newspaper said Colombo would send a formal reply to Gandhi.
The Sun said his remarks were counterproductive to his efforts to help find a peaceful solution to the conflict between Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority and Tamils in which more than 4000 people have been killed in the past three years.
Gandhi is mediating between the Sri Lank government and Tamil groups which are demanding an independent nation. The 50 million Tamils in India’s Tamil Nadu state have close links with Sri Lankan Tamils.
Gandhi made his remarks after Sri Lankan Prime Minister Rana Singh Premadasa held discussions with him in Harare last Wednesday.
Premadasa also sent a letter to Gandhi requesting him to issue an ultimatum to Tamil guerrillas to stop violence and accept the government’s peace proposals.
Premadasa urged Gandhi to close guerrilla camps in Indian Territory and to control the smuggling of weapons to Sri Lanka.
At the news conference Gandhi denied that there were any camps in India
“The fact is we have about 130000 Sri Lanka Tamil refugees in India. We don’t want them in India. We want them to go back. But as long as the security forces are massacring innocent Tamils they are afraid to go back” Gandhi said.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 12, 1986
