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More int'l truce monitors arrive in Sri Lanka |
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18:20, July 03, 2007 |
The international truce monitoring group observing the fragile ceasefire in Sri Lanka said Tuesday that its team has been strengthened with additional personnel.
Thorfinnur Omarsson, spokesman of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), said that 10 additional men are to join the group.
"Five of them have already arrived with five more to arrive in the next few days," Omarsson said.
The SLMM consisting of representatives from Iceland and Norway will have 30 personnel as their full strength from the current 20.
The SLMM arrived in the country in February 2002 consisting of Nordic country representatives in order to observe the truce agreement signed that year.
However, in May last year the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) demanded that monitors from the European Union (EU) member nations quit the mission following a decision by the EU to name the LTTE as a terrorist organization.
As a result the mission came to be confined to non-EU member states, Norway and Iceland.
The SLMM has made rulings on ceasefire violations by both sides, the bulk of which have been weighed on the LTTE.
About 5,000 people have died in the escalation of the conflict between government troops and the LTTE since the end of 2005 and the upsurge of violations has rendered the SLMM's task extremely difficult.
Source: Xinhua
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