Sri Lanka Tamil Rebels Accused of Forcibly Holding up Truce Monitors

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 15, 2002

Sri Lanka Tamil Rebels Accused of Forcibly Holding up Truce Monitors

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The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), a group of Scandinavian monitors supervising a ceasefire between the government and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels on Sunday accused the rebels of holding up two of their members by force in violation of the truce agreement.

SLMM spokesman Teitur Torkelsson said that two of their memberswere forcibly held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on board a trawler until they took the trawler to the shore.

The incident happened at the Iranativu south island off the northwest coast in the gulf of Mannar on Saturday afternoon.

At around 5:30 p.m. the Sri Lankan navy's coastal guard spottedtwo suspected LTTE trawlers and halted one of them for investigation but the other trawler fled the scene.

They invited the SLMM monitors to carry out a check on board for possible presence of arms for the LTTE rebels.

The two SLMM members on board the LTTE trawler found communication equipment there and the rebels took the boat away byspeeding towards the shore. They were later released.

The LTTE rebels were also accused of abducting at least six civilians from the majority Sinhala community on Saturday.

Police officer H.A. Pushpakumara in Aralaganwila, some 230 kilometers northeast of the capital Colombo, said that six villagers who had been cutting wood to build homes had been abducted by the LTTE.

One of them was later released. He told the police that the LTTE rebels were demanding 145,000 rupees (around 1,500 US dollars)for the release of five other villagers.

The Scandinavian monitors last week in a report said that the LTTE were guilty of at least 56 violations of the ceasefire agreement signed on Feb. 22. Most of them were abductions and kidnappings.

The ceasefire agreement is expected to lead to direct peace talks to be held in Thailand next month. The talks are aimed at ending the armed ethnic conflict that has claimed over 64,000 lives.

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