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| Sunday, 29 June 2003 |
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Mullaitivu incident : "LTTE violates law of sea" SLMM: Navy right to intercept by Our Defence Correspondent The Navy was right to have intercepted the LTTE supply vessel in the June 14th confrontation at sea off Mullaitivu, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) has said in its much-awaited report on the incident. The SLMM report, issued yesterday afternoon, faults the LTTE for what the Monitors say are violation of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea for "not flying an appropriate flag and official, visible identification at the time of the incident". The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), though unable to conclusively determine what happened, has not found the Navy to have violated the ceasefire agreement by intercepting the LTTE tanker. They have noted that the Navy should have saved the data recorded on the incident and not erased it prior to the SLMM investigation. The SLMM report has also recommended that the Government and the LTTE "should as soon as possible" reach an agreement on measures to prevent clashes at sea. The four-page report has justified the Navy's decision to intercept the vessel, by pointing out that the SLN most probably had a right to intercept the tanker as it was "without nationality". The report points out that the ceasefire agreement (CFA) article 1.2 states "Neither Party shall engage in any offensive military operation....such acts as offensive naval operations (1.2c) and further more according to the CFA 1.3" the Sri lankan Armed Forces shall continue to perform their legitimate task of safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri lanka without engaging in offensive operations against the LTTE . "The navy has the authority to perform its legitimate tasks at sea according to Sri lanka laws, CFA and UN Convention on the Law of the Sea" is a direct quote from the report. The report also added that there was no evidence of the Sea Tiger crew being in the custody of the Navy. Both the SL Navy and the LTTE gave contradictory accounts of the incident, with the former claiming the vessel was carrying weapons and the later insisting it was a merchant tanker. The report points out that as neither party had informed the SLMM in due time, the SLMM was not in a position to prevent the untoward incident in the sea. |
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