Sri Lanka rules out amnesty for rebel leader

COLOMBO (AFP) – Sri Lanka ruled out an amnesty for the Tamil Tiger leader as troops pressed a final offensive against the cornered rebels despite a global outcry over the plight of civilians trapped in the war zone.
President Mahinda Rajapakse said Velupillai Prabhakaran, whose Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are fighting to prevent complete defeat after being pushed to a narrow stretch of coastal jungle, would not be pardoned.

"The LTTE leader has spurned the possibility of pardon by us," the president's office quoted him as saying. "He must now face the consequences of his acts."

However, two senior Tiger officials surrendered to government forces on Wednesday as the military reported that over 100,000 civilians escaped from rebel-held territory and sought shelter with troops since Monday.

One of those who turned themselves in was the Tigers' main mouthpiece to the outside world, chief spokesman Velayudam Dayanidi, better known as Daya Master.

Another official, who once served as an aide to the late head of the Tigers' political wing, S.P. Thamilselvan, also surrendered.

Video footage by state television showed a young pregnant woman delivering a baby while in a bus that was taking her and other displaced civilians away from the war zone on Wednesday.

Men and women carrying infants and the sick were seen wading through waist-deep water to get to safety while thousands waited for food.

"Our operations to rescue civilians are continuing," government defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told reporters, describing the Tigers as a spent force with just 12 square kilometres (five square miles) of land left.

"The LTTE has lost all its military capabilities. They are fighting a losing battle," he said, adding the government also "strongly believes" that Prabhakaran, 54, was still in the area.

The Tigers, who have been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland since 1972, have acknowledged losing ground and have accused the government of killing 1,000 civilians in recent days.

The military said fleeing non-combatants were fired on by the rebels who allegedly kept villagers as human shields.

The rival claims are hard to verify as independent reporters are not allowed near the conflict zone but aid agencies have painted a grim picture.

"The situation is nothing short of catastrophic," said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, operations director for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has asked that UN staff be allowed to carry out relief operations.

"The casualties are certainly in the thousands and have been fairly consistently high running throughout the last couple of months, as the patch of (LTTE) territory has narrowed," said Gordon Weiss, the UN spokesman in Colombo.

An aid worker from Doctors without Borders (MSF) reported that a hospital in the government-controlled area had received more than 400 new patients in the past two days.

"The buses are still coming and they're actually unloading dead bodies at times as some wounded people died on the way," said Karen Stewart, a medical officer working in Vavuniya.

"It's chaotic," she said. "We have people under every bed, so that's double capacity. You also have a lot of people who are outside in the walkways lying on mats."

The apparent endgame in Sri Lanka has triggered protests around the world.

The LTTE were once considered one of the world's most efficient guerilla outfits, controlling over a third of Sri Lanka's territory and running a de facto mini-state.

A Norwegian-brokered truce between Colombo and Tigers began falling apart in December 2005, and fighting since then has seen the progressive collapse of the rebel army.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday he would send a minister to Sri Lanka this week, urging a ceasefire in the battle between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels.

Brown said that following talks with President Mahinda Rajapakse, he also expected that a delegation of British parliamentarians would be allowed to go to Sri Lanka to assess the extent of humanitarian assistance available.