Make Sri Lanka a model to defeat terrorism – Defence Secretary [September 15 2010]

Any country confronted with terrorism should take Sri Lanka as a model in successfully annihilating terrorism through a humanitarian operation, as a model, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa said.  

In an interview with the The Asian Age he said: “I think in fighting terrorism as well as humanitarian assistance in a conflict like this, there are lots of lessons for others to learn rather than criticize".  

He said that the government declared no-fire-zones and restrictions on use of heavy weapons which were not normally done anywhere in the world in a battle against terrorism.  

Refuting the allegations that some LTTE leaders who wanted to surrender were shot, Rajapaksa said that Prabhakaran did not want to surrender and on the very last day that they were defeated they tried to launch a counter attack to escape. “ There would have been no problem if they had surrendered, but we came to that last minute after a hard battle and a lot of sacrifices, so we were not ready for ceasefire”, he said.  

The Defence Secretary said that nobody including the UN informed the government about any surrender and it took time to defeat the LTTE because of the civilians.

“If we had no such concerns, we could have bombarded the place, used all our artillery and walked through within a day but we took over two months. So the international community must consider the risks that we took”, he said.