Monitors blame Sri Lanka forces for aid massacre
Wed Aug 30, 2006 5:25pm ET

By Peter Apps
COLOMBO (Reuters) - International cease-fire monitors blamed Sri Lankan troops on Wednesday for the killing of 17 aid workers during fighting with Tamil Tiger rebels this month.
The victims were working on tsunami relief projects for international aid group Action Contre La Faim in the northeastern town of Mutur, where government troops were fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
"SLMM is, with the obtained findings, convinced that there cannot be any other armed groups than the security forces who could actually have been behind the act," said a statement from the Nordic-staffed Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM).
The government has denied troops were involved in the execution-style killings and promised an investigation.
"What disturbs me is the speed with which SLMM made this ruling," said head of the government peace secretariat Palitha Kohona. "Why was the SLMM in such a hurry when there is still a judicial inquiry going on?"
In New York, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland threatened to end aid operations in the area unless the government disclosed what it knew about the killings.
"We have no independent information ourselves in the U.N. But I say we cannot continue in this area unless people will be held accountable for the execution of 17 of our colleagues," Egeland told reporters at U.N. headquarters.
The victims, all but one of them ethnic Tamils, were found shot dead and lying face down in the compound of their office. The killing was the worst mass murder of aid staff since a 2003 bomb attack on the United Nations compound in Baghdad, Iraq

Many aid staff and some of the families blamed the military, who have also been accused of other killings.
LEARNING FROM NORTHERN IRELAND
The SLMM statement came as a delegation headed by President Mahinda Rajapakse left for London. Rajapakse is to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday for what officials called "substantive talks" to discuss the ongoing open warfare between the government and the rebels.
The key issue is likely to be lessons learned from the Northern Ireland peace process. Former senior Irish Republican Army member Martin McGuinness has met Rajapakse twice, and the rebels once this year, to discuss the same issue.
Diplomats say Sri Lanka's interest in discussing Northern Ireland is a positive sign, but a 2002 truce with the rebels has been shattered and remains only on paper.
The SLMM statement came days before outgoing Swedish mission head Maj. Gen. Ulf Henricsson steps down because of demands from the Tigers that all European Union monitors quit.
The demand came after the EU declared the Tigers a terrorist organization. Monitors from non-EU members Norway and Iceland will remain in Sri Lanka after the rebels' September 1 deadline.
SLMM also ruled that the Tigers breached the cease-fire in an attack on a civilian bus in June that killed almost 70 people, while blaming the government for a string of similar attacks in rebel areas. Each deny the charge.
Hundreds of troops, rebels and civilians have died in the past month, and more than 200,000 people have fled their homes. The army said 13 soldiers have been killed in action and 79 wounded in the area since Monday.

The Tigers, who want a separate ethnic Tamil homeland in the north and east, vow they will never leave the area around the town of Sampur, a position on the edge of the harbor that allows them to shell the naval base and nearby shipping.
(Additional reporting by Ranga Sirilal and Simon Gardner in Colombo and Matthew Verrinder at the United Nations)