No surrender to third party - Defence Secretary

Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa stressed that the Government cannot let the LTTE to surrender to a third party and emphasised that LTTE should be made to surrender only to the Government of Sri Lanka.

The Defence Secretary, speaking to the Sunday Observer said this while commenting on the United States’ request for the LTTE to surrender to a third party.

“Sri Lankan people had suffered from terrorism and it is our people who were killed by the LTTE. It is not fair for a foreign country to request that the LTTE be allowed to surrender to an outside party,” Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said speaking to the `Sunday Observer’. “This is an internal matter and we, as the Government, can assure that the problem can be settled internally,” he added.

At a daily press briefing on Friday US State Department spokesman Robert Wood had stated, “”The Tamil Tigers must stop holding civilians and thus placing them in harm’s way. We call on the Tamil Tigers to lay down their arms and surrender to a third party.” Yet, the US State Department has not specified who the third party is, media reports stated.

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