Aid agencies asked to relocate only temporarily - President

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that aid agencies had been asked to vacate uncleared areas only temporarily and they would be able to return once the Tigers are defeated.

'We told them to get out of Wanni in order to ensure their own safety. It is only a short term measure and very soon these aid agencies would be able to get back and serve the people there.

But I cannot set a time frame for their return at the moment,' President Rajapaksa told foreign correspondents at a dinner meeting Monday at his residence.

President Rajapaksa said the directive for the aid agencies to pull out from the uncleared areas was 'not at all an indication by the government to intensify the ongoing military campaign against the rebels'.

The UN and other aid agencies began moving their staff and equipment out of the Sri Lanka's north last week following government orders as fighting between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) intensified.

Claiming that the Government mechanism was in place to look after the needs of the civilians there, the President said that the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank 'are ready to fund developmental projects in the North and the East'.

Speaking to foreign journalists, the President said the time for talks was over, the only option left for the LTTE was to put down their arms and surrender.

"We can crush them, there is no question that we can't," he said. He said he was confident of imminent victory in the 25-year-old war with the rebels.

"I know they are getting weak," he said.

He said he had no intention of letting the war simmer indefinitely.

"We won't allow them to go to the jungle, we will follow them until we get (Velupillai) Prabakharan and Pottu Amman," he said referring to the head of the Tigers and the intelligence chief.

IANS