The Ceylon News

Sri Lanka's bourse jumped 5.48
percent to a two-month high on Monday led by bargain-hunting on
select bluechips due to an expected economic recovery with
investors are increasingly confident of end to a 25-year old
war.
The rupee closed flat with intervention from a state bank.
The Colombo All-Share index .CSE surged 90.46 points to
1740.41, its highest close since Nov. 18. The bourse is up 13.6
percent in last five sessions and 15.8 percent so far this
year.
It fell 40.8 percent last year on earnings and economic woes
including high borrowing costs that hampered share prices,
because companies found new investment and expansion expensive.
"With the military progressing at a rapid pace, amid
declining interest rates and recovery in commodity prices,
investor confidence has risen," said Hussain Gani, associate
director at Asia Securities.
Sri Lanka's army chief has told media over the weekend that
the ground war could be completely finished by mid-April.
Top conglomerate John Keells Holdings JKH.CM rose 8.34
percent to 71 rupees, calculated on a weighted average.
Sri Lanka's top mobile operator Dialog Telekom DIAL.CM rose
5 percent to 5.25 rupees a share. It hit an all-time low on
Jan. 12, due to the launch of India's top mobile operator
Bharti Airtel Ltd. (BRTI.BO: Quote, Profile, Research) as the fifth entrant to Sri
Lanka's market.
Top listed private lender Commercial Bank of Ceylon
COMB.CM jumped 18.12 percent after it announced it will hold
a state bank's $15 million deposit until a court case over a
disputed oil hedging contract is decided, traders said.
Market turnover was 263.9 million rupees ($2.3 million),
less than two-thirds of the 2008 daily average of 464 million
rupees.

The rupee closed unchanged at 113.85/113.95 per dollar
after a state bank intervened at 113.87 level, dealers said.
The rupee hit an all-time low of 114.15 a dollar in trading on
Jan. 5, while it hit a life closing low of 113.85/114.00 on
Friday. It has fallen 0.79 percent this year.
Three currency dealers Reuters spoke to said the central
bank called a meeting with bank treasuries on Monday to assure
them the rupee will not be devalued and to explain plans to
build up reserves and meet its external borrowing needs this
year.
Dealers said a weekend newspaper article suggesting the
bank would have to either devalue the rupee by 20 percent or go
for an IMF bailout package had raised some concerns in early
trade.

Nandalal Weerasinghe, chief economist at the central bank,
confirmed the meeting and said the report was false.
"There is no necessity for central bank to devalue the
currency by 20 percent and this is an erroneous,
politically-motivated news report," he said.
The interbank lending rate or call money rate CLIBOR
edged down to 15.252 percent from Friday's 15.776 percent.
For secondary market rates, please see <0#lkbmk=>.
($1=113.90 Sri Lankan Rupee)
(Editing by Bryson Hull)

COLOMBO (AFP) — Sri Lanka's top Tamil Tiger, who inspired hundreds of followers to stage suicide bombings in the fight for a separate state, is facing his biggest challenge yet and is fast running out of options.

To his followers, Velupillai Prabhakaran is seen as a "Sun God" who formed a formidable and feared guerrilla organisation out of a ragtag group of separatist rebels in the 1970s.

But to his enemies, he is considered a ruthless killer, outlawed around the world as a terrorist kingpin and wanted on charges of mass murder.

At the height of his military success, Prabhakaran's Tigers inflicted heavy losses on the government forces of Sri Lanka and neighbouring India.

But since Sri Lankan forces mounted their biggest ground, sea and air campaign so far to dismantle the de facto Tiger state in the north of the island, Prabhakaran has seen his territory crumble rapidly.

"Prabhakaran is facing the biggest military setback in his career and it is unlikely he can recover," said former rebel-turned-politician Dharmalingam Sithadthan.

The chubby Prabhakaran, usually pictured wearing combat fatigues and sporting a bushy moustache, inspired hundreds of young men, women and even children to stage suicide bombings in the battle for a separate state called Eelam for the island's minority Tamils.

Sri Lanka's army chief, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka, who survived a Tiger suicide assassination attempt in April 2006, has said Prabhakaran is running out of hiding places amid the ongoing military operation.

Fonseka has said he wants to crush the Tigers by April, when the country marks the traditional Sinhala and Tamil New Year. Despite promises in November to strike back, Prabhakaran's Tamil Tigers have failed to impress.

The Tigers are now surrounded and restricted to their jungle hideouts in the northeastern corner of Sri Lanka, from where Fonseka has threatened to drive the rebels into the sea.

Born on November 26, 1954 in the Tamil heartland of Jaffna, Prabhakaran has been a guerrilla fighter for most of his life, building up the dreaded Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from a motley band of rebels.

Prabhakaran went on to shape one of the world's deadliest killing machines, building an organisation with its own army, navy and air force.

He inspired his cadres to wear a cyanide capsule around their necks to commit suicide in case they were cornered by security forces.

Neighbouring India, which once nurtured and provided a safe haven to Prabhakaran, treating him as a freedom fighter battling oppression of minority Tamils by a majority Sinhalese government, now treats him as a wanted man.

Prabhakaran is suspected in the 1991 assassination of former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi, who in 1987 ordered Indian troops to disarm the Tigers and ended up fighting them for 32 months.

India withdrew its troops in May 1990 after 1,200 soldiers were killed fighting the Tigers.

Since visiting New Delhi in 1987, Prabhakaran is not known to have left Sri Lanka, although his outfit took part in Norwegian-brokered peace talks between 2002 and 2006.

Former rebel Sithadthan said he did not believe Prabhakaran had mellowed with age and said the guerrilla leader was unlikely to allow himself to be captured alive.

"He may have already left the island by boat," Sithadthan said, echoing a belief held by Sri Lankan security forces.

However, Prabhakaran is unlikely to have many friends overseas. The Tigers are banned across Europe, Australia and the United States.

There is an international arrest warrant against him for, among other incidents, the 1996 bombing of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka building, which killed 91 people.

Prabhakaran, the youngest of four children from a middle-class family and nicknamed "Thamby," or younger brother, went underground in 1972 after dropping out of school and forming the Tiger outfit.

At the time he longed to own a revolver, even a rusty one, according to an official biography.

His strength has been his band of suicide bombers, who have claimed a long list of high-profile victims including Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa, assassinated in May 1993.

He has put down dissent within the group and has not encouraged any successor in an organisation that has had no clear number two leader.

Chinks began to appear in 2004 when his top field commander known as Colonel Karuna defected and weakened his once mighty militia.

	CM Pillayan expresses hope that this is the last time civilians are displaced in the NE

Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan (Pillayan) said that Sri Lanka troops have already reported to have already entered Pudukudiyiruppu.

He made the remarks while launching a programme to collect aid for the use of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in the war zone in Mullaitivu, northern Sri Lanka.

The ministers in the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) have decided to launch the programme through local government offices in the province and collect aid until 26 January.

'Detaining civilians'

The aid is to be delivered to transit camps in the north where IDPs arriving from the war zone are camped.

By the time the aid collection is completed, CM Pillayan said, every civilian in the war zone would be in transit camps.

A New York based human rights group has earlier criticised the conditions in the transit camps.

The Human Rights Watch also accused the authorities of detaining civilians fleeing the battle zone.

Denying the accusation, the government accuses the LTTE of keeping the civilians under their control as a human shield.

Mr. Pillayan said that he regrets the plight of the civilians caught in the conflict.

Describing the displacement as 'temporary', the former Tamil Tiger turned politician said he expected that it will be the last displacement of civilians.

"It is natural for the civilians to be displaced in a war situation. But I sincerely hope that this will be the last displacement," he said.

	India has expressed concern at the humanitarian situation in the north

The Indian foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon expressed India's concern at the humanitarian situation in the north during a meeting with the Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa in Kandy on Saturday.

An Indian embassy statement said Mr Menon also urged Sri Lanka to speed up efforts to find a negotiated political settlement to the conflict.

Fighting terrorism

Mr. Menon has told President Rajapaksa that Indo-Lanka relations have never been so close, warm and deep, according to a statement issued by the Presidential Secretariat.

“The visiting Foreign Secretary reaffirmed India’s cooperation with Sri Lanka in the attempts to eliminate terrorism from Sri Lanka and the region,” the statement added.

The Sri Lankan president has once again pledged to find a political solution “and that he would deal with terrorism firmly and militarily,” it said.

International human rights organisations say as many as a-quarter-of-a-million civilians are trapped in rebel territory.

The government in Delhi has been under increasing pressure from Tamils in southern India to do more about the conflict in Sri Lanka.

Hospital authorities say children and women are among the injured

Medical staff in Sri Lanka say at least 18 civilians have been killed as the military continues its offensive on the northern bases of Tamil Tiger rebels.

Hospital officials said the number killed in fighting around Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu could be much higher.

The military said Mullaitivu - the last major rebel stronghold - was now surrounded, but it denied rebel claims that civilians came under attack.

A military spokesman told the BBC that the allegation was propaganda.

Aid agencies say they are concerned about the fate of the 250,000 civilians living in rebel-held territory in the north of the country.

'Crumbling fast'

According to a Tamil Tiger statement and reports on the pro-rebel TamilNet website, the Sri Lankan military attacked civilians in rebel-held villages around Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu.

But army spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara dismissed the claims that 18 people had been killed and more than 40 injured in the strikes.

The Sri Lanka army says it is closing in on the rebels

He told the BBC's Sinhala service that the Tamil Tigers' claim was propaganda "as they have been cornered and are seeking international attention".

Earlier, an army spokesman said rebel resistance was crumbling fast.

The Tigers have lost a considerable amount of territory to government forces in the last few months, including key strongholds Kilinochchi and Elephant Pass.

The two sides have differed widely in their reports of casualties.

Independent journalists are prevented by the government from travelling to the conflict zone, so it is impossible to verify the casualty claims made by both sides.

The Jaffna peninsula and its capital have been regarded as the heart of the 25-year-old separatist insurgency.

The Tigers are fighting for a separate homeland. At least 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting.