[Al Jazeera]

Two years after the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, many minority Tamils in the north say the military retains too strong a hold over their daily lives.

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[Reuters]

Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils say President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s post-war development and infrastructure projects in the former war zone in the island’s north have yet to address their real concerns and have not excluded their participation.

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[ AP ]

The Sri Lankan government officially outlawed the Tamil Tiger rebel group Wednesday, ruling out the possibility of restarting peace talks any time soon to end a quarter-century of civil war. The Tamil Tigers had long been outlawed in Sri Lanka, but the government lifted the ban in 2002 when the sides agreed a ceasefire. The deal collapsed amid new fighting three years ago. The rebels have been fighting since 1983 to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization by governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. The conflict has killed more than 70,000 people.

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[ AP ]

Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger separatists are open to restarting peace talks with the government, despite the continuing military offensive aimed at crushing the group, a senior rebel official said. The two sides have been fighting for more than 25 years over the rebels’ demands for an independent state for minority Tamils in the north and east of this Indian Ocean island nation. A new military push deep into the rebel heartland in recent months has forced the Tamil Tigers to retreat from vast swaths of land they once controlled, and the government has said it expects to finish off the group in the coming months.

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