The much-delayed Colombo-Tuticorin passenger ferry service, which was to start on Friday, has been postponed at the request of the Sri Lankan authorities.

An official of the Ceylon Shipping Corporation (CSC), which is responsible for running the service on the Sri Lankan side, told Express here on Thursday, that there were two reasons for seeking a postponement: “First, the area around Colombo harbour is now being used for the Victory Day celebrations and many roads are blocked. Second, President Mahinda [...]

A statement purportedly originating from the defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has rubbished jailed ex-LTTE leader K Padmanathan’s recent claim that the Tamil Tigers had once planned to assassinate Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

"KP’s claim in a television interview that LTTE had once planned to assassinate Jayalalithaa was far from the truth and we perceive the act as a ploy to create fissures among Tamils," the statement said on Friday.

According to the fourpage statement signed [...]

The Q Branch special police of Tamil Nadu on Thursday took details of the Sri Lankan passenger Jeevadas, who was nabbed by the Immigration sleuths at the Cochin International Airport, Nedumbassery, when the he tried to leave the country to Paris with a forged passport in the name of ‘Savari Muthu Peter’ by an Oman Air flight on Tuesday. The team took all the details regarding his previous activities and involvements in terrorist organisations like LTTE.

However the team comprising [...]

A native of Jaffna was taken into custody for possessing a forged passport when the immigration personnel at the Cochin International Airport here grilled him when he was trying to leave the country to Paris by Oman Air flight on Tuesday.

Emigration police superintendent K G James told Express that Jeevadas, 30, a Sri Lankan, possessed a passport in the name of Savari Muthu Peter, issued from Trichy passport office in 2007.  Emigration personnel during the clearance proceedings found that [...]

The Sri Lankan government and the majority Sinhalese are unfazed by J Jayalalithaa’s coming back to power in Tamil Nadu. But the minority Tamils are somewhat divided, with one section being happy to see the DMK-Congress combine suffering a crushing defeat, and another feeling that the change of guard will not make any difference to New Delhi’s policy on the Lankan Tamil issue.

Cabinet spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said that statements made by TN politicians on the Lankan issue were of [...]

India will provide financial aid to develop the biggest harbour in Sri Lanka’s north to facilitate transportation of goods from nearby Indian ports, according to a Sri Lankan official here.

The Kankasanthurai harbour in Jaffna peninsula will be developed in two phases. The harbour is one of 10 sea and air entry points to the country.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who holds the finance portfolio, presented to the cabinet the proposal to develop the harbour.

Sri Lanka High Commission’s Minister-Counsellor Sugeeswara [...]

Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, a senior minister in the Rajapaksa government and a former Prime Minister, has quit the government delegation now in talks with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) on finding a political solution to the Tamil question.

In a letter to President Mahinda Rajapaksa last week, Wickramanayake said he could not continue to talk to the TNA after it had endorsed the report of the UN panel on war crimes in Sri Lanka, a report totally rejected by the Rajapaksa [...]

A UN report has found credible evidence that both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers violated human rights in the last stages of the conflict, some of it amounting to war crimes.

But the report, which became public this week, is more harsh on Colombo, saying most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war in 2008-09 "were caused by government shelling".

"Between September 2008 and May 19, 2009, the Sri Lanka Army advanced its military campaign [...]

With a UN panel equating killing of tens of thousands of people in the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil strife to "war crimes", India today said the issues raised in the report need to be studied carefully and it intends to engage with Sri Lankan government on these matters.

"The government has seen the Report of the Panel of Experts appointed by the UN Secretary General to advise him on accountability-related issues in the context of the end [...]

Sri Lanka believes that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will eventually steer his government towards the Lankan side on the UN war crimes report issue.

A top Lankan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Express that Singh had a track record of supporting Sri Lanka in its hour of need.   

It is recalled here that when the entire Western lobby was bent on introducing a scathing resolution against Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva during [...]

At the top echelons of the Sri Lankan government there is a belief that India is playing a ‘double game’ in the UN war crimes panel issue.

The belief stems from the fact that India has been observing an intriguing silence on the issue when the UN, backed by the US and its Western allies, seems to be bent on pillorying Sri Lanka on war crimes charges.

The silence intrigues Sri Lankans because India has greater political, strategic and economic [...]

The report of the UN expert panel on war crimes in Sri Lanka says that in the last days of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, three top LTTE leaders had approached the Lankan army’s lines carrying a white flag intending to surrender, but they were reportedly shot dead by the Lankan troops.

“While there is little information on the circumstances of their death, the panel believes that the LTTE leadership intended to surrender,” [...]

The UN panel on war crimes in Sri Lanka has estimated that up to 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the last phase of the war between government forces and the LTTE in 2009.

Sources have estimated that there could have been as many as 40,000 civilian deaths,” an extract from the yet to be released report, published by Colombo-based The Island newspaper, said on Monday.

The panel, however, admitted that even two years after the war, there was [...]

The entire Kerala coast was put on high alert on Sunday evening after Central intelligence agencies alerted the state police on a possible attempt by Sri Lankan Tamils to sneak into the state through the coastal regions.

Sources with the Intelligence agencies said the alert was issued from Chennai after inputs that a group of 25 persons from Sri Lanka would attempt to enter the country through the coastal regions in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

"There is no specific input [...]

The Sri Lankan Deputy Minister of External Affairs, Neomal Perera, told Express on Saturday that the government was “ not at all bothered” about the UN panel’s report on the war crimes allegedly committed by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE in the last phase of Eelam War IV in 2009.

Perera said that he had seen the report but could offer no comment on it before his ministry’s officials had read it carefully. The officials were away on [...]