The European Union formalised a ban of Lanka's Tamil Tigers, and urged both the rebels and the island's government to halt a rash of killings.
COLOMBO: The European Union on Wednesday formalised a ban of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, and urged both the rebels and the island's government to halt a rash of killings that are threatening to plunge the island back into civil war.
The ban by the 25-nation bloc, which was agreed behind closed doors in Brussels on Monday, will freeze the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) funds and assets in member states as well as prohibit the provision of financial services to them.
"The EU still sees a need for the LTTE to amend its violent course and return to peace talks," Austria, current EU president, said in a statement on behalf of the bloc. ''The EU stresses that its decision is directed at the LTTE and not at the Tamil people.''
"The upsurge of violence is not caused by the LTTE alone,'' it added. ''The EU strongly urges the Sri Lankan authorities to curb violence in government-controlled areas. The EU notes with concern the growing number of reports of extrajudicial killings.''
More than 290 soldiers, police, civilians and rebels have been killed in a rash of attacks, from suicide bombings to naval clashes, since February in what the truce monitors and Tigers now call a 'low intensity war'.
The Tigers accuse the military of helping a breakaway band of former comrades to kill their fighters and murder ethnic Tamil civilians, and Nordic truce monitors believe some troops are involved. Security analysts see a pattern of tit-for-tat attacks between the military and the rebels.
The EU ban is a diplomatic slap in the face for the rebels, who have sought to project an image abroad as viable leaders of a de facto state they want recognised as a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the island's north and east.
The Tigers say it will hit relief work. ''We have our own taxation system and we are running (our) central government effectively and the Tamil people's contributions are giving support to the humanitarian needs of the people who are living in the northeast,'' said S Puleedevan, head of the Tigers' peace secretariat.
"Tamil people who have suffered from the war and the (2004) tsunami need funds from the European Union or any donors,'' he added. ''The EU should go a little bit further to exert pressure on the Sri Lankan government.''
The Tigers had previously warned proscription would deter them from returning to talks aimed at permanently halting a war that killed more than 64,000 people before a 2002 ceasefire, and would ''exacerbate the conditions of war'', but have since toned down their rhetoric.
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