LTTE has no rights to sea and air, SLMM reconfirms

SLMM spots LTTE air strip

Chamikara Weerasinghe, Uditha Kumarasinghe and Rafik Jalaldeen

COLOMBO: The LTTE has no rights in the sea or in Sri Lanka's air space according to international law, stressed the spokesperson of Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) Helen Olafsdottir.

She said they (the SLMM) had seen the LTTE air strip and that was a serious violation of the Ceasefire Agreement.

"The SLMM cannot do anything about the situation because of its limitations," she said.

Olafsdottir was speaking to journalists at Lake House at a special meeting organised by the Daily News yesterday.

She said: "Although the Government security forces allow SLMM monitors to inspect localities in cleared areas , the LTTE does not allow them to inspect localities in uncleared areas.

"We cannot function beyond the mandate given to us by the Government and the LTTE to monitor the Ceasefire."

"Our monitoring activities are stuck in the mandate when it comes to implementing the CFA," she said.

"We cannot change the mandate, we are stuck in it, and it is frustrating".

"The CFA may be amended for effective implementation with the participation of the Government and the LTTE," she said.

"The SLMM monitors cannot demand from the LTTE stating that they it should be given access to uncleared areas without their permission because there was no such mandate for them to do that," she said.

Olafsdottir also said they would not withdraw from ceasefire monitoring no matter how difficult it was going to be for them, until both parties asked them to do so.

"If it was not possible for us to engage in ceasefire monitoring from the North and East, we will monitor it from Kandy if we have to ," she said.

"If we leave out the country, the CFA will become invalid,"she added.