Lanka News 1-5 October 1990

[KA...@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov]

9 09/30 1148 LANKAN ARMY, POLICE FIND LARGE HAUL OF REBEL WEAPONS
8 10/01 0901 NEW WAVE OF VIOLENCE CLAIMS 14 LIVES IN LANKA
7 10/02 0907 LANKAN GOVERNMENT ISSUES ARMS TO RIVAL TAMIL GROUPS
6 10/03 1000 LANKAN REBELS STRENGTHEN POSITIONS AROUND ...
5 10/04 0600 SEVEN SOLDIERS DIE IN SUSPECTED REBEL AMBUSH IN ...
4 10/04 0818 VIOLENCE LEAVES 10 TAMIL REBELS AND SEVEN SOLDIERS ...
3 10/04 0852 THREE ACQUITTED OF CONSPIRING TO MURDER LANKAN ...
2 10/04 0919 LANKAN POLICE SEIZE 862 KG. OF POWDERED CANNABIS
1 10/05 0940 SAUDI ARABIA AGREES TO OPEN BORDER TO LANKANS ...

09/30 1148 LANKAN ARMY, POLICE FIND LARGE HAUL OF REBEL WEAPONS

COLOMBO (SEPT. 30) REUTER - Lankan army and police recovered a large haul of
weapons and ammunition in raids on Tamil rebel hideouts in the eastern district
of Trincomalee, military sources said on Sunday.
Three rebels were killed in the raids, all on Saturday, the sources said.
At Welioya, the army found 105 automatic rifles, 47 AK-47 rifles, 24 light
machine guns, 32 G-3 rifles and 30,000 rounds of ammunition in a Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam armoury.
In a second operation, troops recovered 20 AK-47s and 55,000 rounds of
ammunition.
The sources said police in other raids found 24 sub-machine guns and more
ammunition.

10/01 0901 NEW WAVE OF VIOLENCE CLAIMS 14 LIVES IN LANKA

COLOMBO (OCT. 1) - A fresh wave of violence in eastern Lanka left at least
14 people dead including nine civilians, as Colombo lifted a curfew in the
rebel stronghold of northern Jaffna, officials said Monday.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels killed nine Sinhalese
villagers early Monday in eastern Ampara district, a military spokesman here
said, adding that government troops shot dead five guerrillas in the region.
Heavily armed rebels raided the Sinhalese village of Peruwalatalawa and
killed six men, two women and a child, the spokesman said. Three others were
admitted to hospital.
An official said the LTTE split into two groups to enable one gang to fight
off the homeguards - Colombo-armed and trained villagers - while the other
carried out the attack.

10/02 0907 LANKAN GOVERNMENT ISSUES ARMS TO RIVAL TAMIL GROUPS

COLOMBO (OCT. 2) - Rival groups of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
in the north east of the country are being provided with weapons by the
Lankan government for "self-defence", the leader of Tamil group said on
Tuesday.
Douglas Devanandan, leader of the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), a
splinter group of a former Tamil militant group, said that almost all rival
Tamil groups of the LTTE were using weapons issued by the state to face any
threat from the LTTE, the main Tamil rebel faction in the country.
He said its cadres that were operating in the Lankan army occupied Kayts
island in northern Lanka and the weapons issued for "self defence" might be
used for the "destruction of the LTTE, which is fighting for an independent
homeland in the north east of the country for the minority Tamils.
The People's Liberation Organistion of Tamil Eelam (Plote), another rival
group, has also admitted that it was moving about in the northern Vavuniya
districts with weapons issued by the government.
Civilians arriving in Colombo form the war-torn north east said most of the
rival Tamil groups were assisting the army in their operations against the
powerful LTTE.
The Tamil rebels are holding on to over 90 percent of the land in the north,
while government troops have been confined to three main military camps there.
In the east, security forces have taken control of most areas except for a few
rebel pockets.

10/03 1000 LANKAN REBELS STRENGTHEN POSITIONS AROUND ...

Colombo (OCT. 3) - Rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are
strengthening their positions around two big military camps in northern
Lanka, defence sources said Wednesday.
The sources said the rebels were deploying reinforcements and digging
trenches near Palaly and Kankesanthurai army camps , indicating they wer
preparing an attack.
The move comes a week after the army withdrew from the Jaffna Fort camp,
which had been under siege for three months by the rebels, who aare fighting for
an independent homeland for the minority Tamils.
In a related development, the defence ministry said the rebels were forcibly
conscripting tamils and taking them to operational areas. It claimed more than
7,000 youths had been conscripted. dpa ms 031453 okt 90

10/04 0600 SEVEN SOLDIERS DIE IN SUSPECTED REBEL AMBUSH IN ...

Colombo (OCT. 4) - Seven soldiers were killed in an ambush by suspected Tamil
rebels in northwest Lanka Thursday morning, military officials said.
The soldiers were ambushed by suspected rebels of the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (Ltte) at Cheddikulam, some 230 kilometers from here, officials
said.
Rebels took weapons and communications equipment following the incident in
which one soldier was also critically injured. The soldiers had been on a
routine patrol.
Meanwhile, in the eastern Ampara district, an Ltte area leader was shot dead
by security forces during an operation against Tamil rebels fighting in the
northeast of the country for an independent homeland for the minority Tamils.
Two rebels were also killed in the same district while in a separate incident
in the adjoining Batticaloa district, security forces opened fire at a group of
suspected rebels harvesting paddy field of some Sinhalase farmers.
Kankestanthurai and Elephant Pass military camps also came under sporadic
fire by rebels Wednesday night, military officials said.
Civilian sources who fled Jaffna said that Tamil rebels had begun leaving
Jaffna Fort camp, which they occupied after government troops pulled out last
week. They were reported to be moving to other operational areas.

10/04 0818 VIOLENCE LEAVES 10 TAMIL REBELS AND SEVEN SOLDIERS ...

COLOMBO (OCT. 4) REUTER - Gunbattles in Lanka's north and east have killed
10 Tamil rebels and seven soldiers, the government said on Thursday.
The soldiers were killed when guerrillas of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam, who are fighting to set up an independent state, ambushed a patrol in the
northern Madawachchiya district, the Defence Ministry said.
Casualties among the rebels were not known.
The Tigers fired on a village as they retreated after the action. No injuries
were reported.
The Special Task Force, a police commando unit, killed eight rebels in
encounters during operations in eastern Amparai district, the Defence Ministry
said.
Two Tigers were killed when troops guarding farmers working in their rice
fields repulsed an attack in eastern Batticaloa.
The government has deployed troops to guard fields following attacks by the
Tigers to try to prevent farmers harvesting rice.

10/04 0852 THREE ACQUITTED OF CONSPIRING TO MURDER LANKAN ...

COLOMBO (OCT. 4) - Three persons charged with conspiring to murder former
Lankan president Junius Richard Jayewardene in parliament 19 days after the
signing of the Indo-Lanka peace accord in 1987 were acquitted by the high court
Thursday.
The three, all employees of parliament, were acquitted for lack of evidence.
The court also found that their pre-trial statements had been taken under
duress. The three had been on trial for a year on charges filed under emergency
regulations and the prevention of terrorism act.
A member of parliament and a government official were killed in a grenade
explosion while more than 25 MPS were injured on August 18, 1987, in an
incident for which the Sinhala Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP -
People's Liberation Front - was blamed by the government.
The Sinhala rebels unleashed a terror campaign against the state following
the signing of the Indo-Lanka peace accord under which nearly 100,000 Indian
troops were deployed in the northeast of the country.

10/04 0919 LANKAN POLICE SEIZE 862 KG. OF POWDERED CANNABIS

COLOMBO (OCT. 4) XINHUA - For the first time in Lanka a consignment of 862
kilograms of Cannabis (Ganja) in powdered form was detected by the police at a
place near colombo this morning, according to the Lankan national news
agency lankapuvath.
Senior superintendent of police in charge Henry Perera told Lankapuvath
that the cannabis with an international street value of 2.5 million U.S.
dollars contained in 15 bags were seized when a truck carrying vegetables to
Colombo from Thanamawila, deep in Uva province, was checked this morning at
Padukka, 30 miles east of Colombo.
The driver and four others accompanying him are now under interrogation.
preliminary investigation revealed that the powdered Cannabis which looked like
wheat flour had been ground by machines.
Investigations also point to the Cannabis being transported to Colombo to
be smuggled by ship to Europe.

10/05 0940 SAUDI ARABIA AGREES TO OPEN BORDER TO LANKANS ...

COLOMBO (OCT. 5) - Thousands of Lankans stranded in Kuwait are expected to
leave the tiny emirate following Saudi Arabia's decision to open its borders to
trapped Lankans, officials said Friday.
Bradman Weerakoon, international affairs advisor to President Ranasinghe
Premadasa, told reporters here that the stranded Lankans now have two new
options in their bid to return home.
They can either cross the Saudi Arabian border from southern Kuwait or travel
home aboard an Indian ship that is currently unloading food for Indian
nationals at the Kuwaiti port of Ulkassar, he said.
He said Saudi Arabia had agreed to open its borders to the Lankans and
that New Delhi had offered to repatriate Lankans aboard the Indian ship.
"India has made an offer and we have accepted that," Mr. Weerakoon said.
Nearly 27,500 of the more than 85,000 Lankan workers stranded in Kuwait
since Iraq's August 2 invasion, have already returned home on flights organised
by the United Nations-sponsored International Organisation for Migration and
Air Lanka.
Mr. Weerakoon said about 50,000 others remain in Kuwait, while another 17,000
Lankans were at refugee camps in the Middle East, particularly in Jordan.
He said the Lankans could travel through Kuwait's southern border to
Dhahran in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, which was a 200 kilometer (124 mile)
journey and from there be returned home on special air flights.
Lankan returnees have been so far travelling in buses from Kuwait to
Amman via Baghdad, a 2,000 kilometer (1240 miles) trek.
Mr. Weerakoon said the Indian ship would be leaving the Ulkassar port for
Dubai from where the Lankans will be flown home.
Baghdad allowed India to send a shipload of food for its stranded nationals
in Kuwait and Iraq and make use of the ship's return journey to evacuate Indian
workers.

15 APn 10/01 1224 BRF--Lanka
8 APn 10/03 1300 BRF--Lanka
3 APn 10/04 1527 Lanka
10 UPn 10/02 1400 Last stop for refugees magnifies happiness, fear
2 APn 10/05 0731 FUN--Books-Deception
5 UPn 10/04 1102 Peace dividend 'illusory' for NATO

APn 10/01 1224 BRF--Lanka

Copyright, 1990. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

COLOMBO, Lanka (AP) -- Suspected Tamil rebels killed nine people Monday
in a raid on a Sinhalese village in eastern Lanka, military officials said.
About 30 rebels of the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam launched a
two-pronged attack on the village at Peruwalatalawa village in the Ampara
district, the officials said.
Soldiers from a nearby camp heard the gunfire and rushed to the village to
drive away the rebels, said the officials, who cannot be identified under
briefing rules.
Victims included two women and a child, they said. Three villagers wounded in
the attack shortly after midnight were rushed to a hospital.
Elsewhere, government troops killed five rebels in two separate
confrontations during the past 24 hours, the officials said.

APn 10/03 1300 BRF--Lanka

Copyright, 1990. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

COLOMBO, Lanka (AP) -- Separate attacks by Tamil rebels left five
Sinhalese villagers and two policemen dead, military officials said Wednesday.
The villagers were hacked to death Tuesday by a squad of rebels at Wahalkada
village in the northern Anuradhapura district, officials said. During the
killings, other rebels besieged the police station, preventing officers from
aiding the villagers.
The slain villagers included three women -- two of them pregnant -- and a
boy, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Six villagers were
injured.
Two policemen were killed and six were injured in a rebel ambush on a patrol
Tuesday night at Arantalawa village in eastern Ampara district, officials said.

APn 10/04 1527 Lanka

Copyright, 1990. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

COLOMBO, Lanka (AP) -- Tamil rebels ambushed and killed seven government
soldiers early Thursday and injured a dozen more in the troubled north, military
officials said.
It was the single largest casualty toll the government has acknowledged in
recent weeks.
The soldiers were killed near the Chettikulam village in the Vavuniya
district, 135 miles northeast of Colombo, according to the officials, who cannot
be identified by name. They said many of the injured soldiers were in critical
condition.
On Wednesday, police commandos killed six Tamil Tiger rebels in skirmishes in
the east.
Military officials said three of the rebels were killed after an unsuccessful
grenade attack near the village of Karaitivu and a fourth was killed near Rufus
Kulam. Two more rebels died when police raided a guerrilla hideout near the
Wattamadu village, they said.

UPn 10/02 1400 Last stop for refugees magnifies happiness, fear

By SANA ATIYEH
AMMAN, Jordan (UPI) -- She is from Lanka, one of thousands of Asian
refugees stranded in desert camps amid the Persian Gulf crisis. She is one of
the lucky ones about to go home, but she fears she will only trade one camp for
another.
Andalus refugee camp in Jordan is the last stop for Asians who -- after
spending weeks in other camps -- usually stay only a day or two before hopping a
bus to the international airport in Amman for flights home. It is a place where
happiness and fear are magnified by the reality of returning.
The camp is dominated by lines: lines for rice and yogurt, neat lines of 300
tents, lines of freshly washed clothes strung on tent ropes. And lines of
exhausted and mostly happy Asian refugees with luggage preparing to board air
conditioned buses heading for the airport.
Andalus is usually a short stopping place, but refugees may start facing
longer waits. Jordan said Tuesday it would be unable to continue financing the
transport of Asians without aid.
The government also said Saturday it faced serious difficulties in providing
basic refugee facilities and could not continue without international help.
Jordan said although the government had been promised $100 million in refugee
aid, only $1.7 million had been received.
The problem for the Lankan woman, however, was more imminent. An ethnic
Tamil from the Indian Ocean island a few miles off India's southeast coast, she
said many of her relatives had fled massacres of Tamils by the Sinhalese
majority in the strife-torn nation. They are now in a refugee camp in India --
and she predicted that after going home, she would end up there as well.
Like the Lankan woman, who asked not to be named, Tamil men also are
concerned amid reports Lankan authorities have arrested Tamil men as soon as
they land in the capital of Colombo.
Still, for many going home is a long awaited quest and memories fade quickly
of their flight from Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, as well as weeks of waiting
at other camps.
Wackaram Pauaseeli, a Lankan who worked in Kuwait as housemaid, lived 16
days at a previous camp and less than 24 hours at the Andalus.
Asked if she had a difficult time at the camps, she replied: "Never mind.
Today I go back to Lanka."
The Asians, mainly Bangladeshis, Lankans and Indians, live in Andalus
after coming from the Azrak desert camps near the Jordanian- Iraqi border. For
many, it is a "five-star" camp, as one Bangladeshi described it, compared to the
Azrak camps where they wait weeks for their turn to fly home.
The number of refugees at Andalus fluctuates daily between 2,000 to 3,000,
according to camp official Abbadi. He said the camp, set up Aug. 28 with a
capacity for 3,000 if 10 are kept in each tent, on one day had as many as 6,000
Asians.
To kill time, men walk aimlessly, sleep or sit in tents talking or playing
cards. The women wash their clothes and talk.
But despite the organization evident at Andalus, there are problems. The
ground is littered with garbage that did not make it to the trash bins and
zinc-roofed latrines near the highway exude the stench of urine, which mixes
with the smell of cooked rice and vegetables.
Refugees fill plastic containers from water tanks with faucets along the
highway, or slosh water from the faucets over their dusty bodies.
Even once white tents are crusted brown with sand.
The cleanest part of the camp is the shower room area, built with cement
blocks and covered with green plastic curtains. A camp official said they were
built for the women, but have been untouched. The women prefer to bathe from the
water tanks near the road while fully-dressed, he said.

APn 10/05 0731 FUN--Books-Deception

Copyright, 1990. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

------ By JOHN BARBOUR
AP Newsfeatures Writer
By now, Victor Ostrovsky is out of hiding, his book, "By Way of Deception"
(St. Martin's), is a best seller, and Israel's spy organization, Mossad, has
what is presumed to be its dirty laundry hanging out for everyone to see.
The book probably wouldn't have been taken seriously, except by Israel's
enemies, if the Israelis hadn't tried to suppress it in New York courts. But
they did.
It is not difficult to see what upset the Israelis, because -- true or not --
it is not in Israel's interest to be so viewed. At the outset, a reader thinks,
well, what is so different about spies after all? They are expected to be cold,
heartless, manipulative liars and killers and, sure enough, they are.
Of course, we have to take Ostrovsky's word for all of this. Although some
events are public knowledge, we have to rely on what he says went on beneath the
surface, and we have to marvel that he was able to keep all of his diaries out
of the hands of the Mossad. Still, much of what he relates is believable.
But, as the tale drags on, as Victor alias Simon alias other names on the
Mossad whim goes through his training as a Mossad officer, one gets the notion
that the entire secret service is giving chutzpah a bad name.
Worse, rather than fight the Arab world, the Mossad is busy enhancing Israeli
business around the world, well outside of its sphere of interest. It is as if
the CIA were engaged in creating markets for IBM or General Motors.
In the case of Lanka, a Mossad officer made a connection with the
country's leader, sold him military equipment, including PT boats for coastal
patrol, then turned around and supplied the rebel Tamils with anti-PT boat arms
to fight the government. It then trained "elite forces for both sides, without
either side knowing about the other, and helped Lanka cheat the World Bank
out of millions of dollars to pay for all the arms they were buying from them."

UPn 10/04 1102 Peace dividend 'illusory' for NATO

By TONY CAPLAN
LONDON (UPI) -- A respected military think tank said Thursday a projected
"peace dividend" for NATO countries was unlikely barring major cuts in
conventional forces, and outlined obstacles likely to face strategic arms
negotiators in the post-Cold War era.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual report, "The
Military Balance," reflected the first significant Soviet and East European
force cuts following the past year's sweeping political changes in the region.
But the world is not necessarily a safer place despite the collapse of the
Warsaw Pact, German reunification and the start of the withdrawal of Soviet
troops to the Soviet Union, said the report, which was released amid the first
major post-Cold War crisis triggered by Iraq's Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.
The report said in addition to the escalating Persian Gulf conflict -- which
has involved forces from 23 countries -- that civil wars in the Horn of Africa,
Cambodia, Lanka and Liberia mean that "feelings of international complacency
would be misplaced."
On a more positive note, the report came as an agreement was reached in
Washington between the Soviet Union and the United States to remove stumbling
blocks that could lead to a conventional forces agreement later this year.
Both countries have committed to reducing troop levels in Europe.
The report said economic pressures would force both superpowers into making
continued cuts in military spending in the years ahead.
"It is widely recognized that the driving force behind President (Mikhail)
Gorbachev's plans for military reform and the reductions in size of the armed
forces is the general parlous state of the economy," the report said.
The Soviet defense budget continued at around 30 percent of the gross
national product, IISS said, while cautioning that defense expenditures
available from Moscow are largely unreliable due to the exclusion of key
components such as research and development.
The Soviet military machine is now threatened not only by economic strife,
but by political turmoil in the Soviet Union, the report said.
While negotiations continued between the superpowers on various fronts,
including nuclear weapons and conventional forces, the realignment of North
Atlantic Treaty and Warsaw Pact forces will mean little in the way of a peace
dividend as defense budgets are cut, the report said.
U.S. military planners were projecting a 25 percent reduction in global troop
levels by 1995, but this would only translate into a 10 percent reduction in
expenditure, the report said.
For NATO countries, "defense spending has been reduced generally in the last
12 months but not so much as to produce the expected peace dividend -- indeed,
the possibility of raising an immediate peace dividend is illusory," it said.
Of the NATO nations, France, Norway, Greece and Turkey were still
significantly increasing the money they spent on the military. A 30 percent rise
in Turkey was mainly due to modernization of equipment and anti-insurgency
campaigns against Kurdish rebels, the report said.
The United Kingdom and Italy cut defense spending the most for 1990, both by
3 percent, the report said.
"Only France remains resolutely firm on not reducing defense spending, with a
3 percent increase planned for 1991," the report said.
France is a NATO member, but does not participate directly in joint planning
or defense exercises.
Although major obstacles in arms negotiations have been overcome, the report
outlined stumbling blocks facing superpower negotiators set to sign major
agreements in 1990 on Strategic Arms Reduction Agreement, START, and
conventional force, CFE, negotiations.
These included the ongoing testing and production of Soviet heavy missiles,
the status of the Soviet Backfire bomber, and transfers of U.S. military
hardware and technology to Britain.