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Night flights from Colombo to resume

B. Muralidhar Reddy

Island Navy accuses disguised LTTE men of attacking Indian fishermen

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka on Tuesday said that it had decided to reopen the Katunayake Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo for night flights shortly. The decision was taken at a special discussion regarding the state of security at the Ministry of Ports and Aviation.

The airport was shut down for night operations in the second week of May after the air wing of the Tigers flew over the skies of Colombo for the second time and bombed select targets.

Separately, the Navy alleged that the LTTE Sea Tigers “with blue T-shirts similar to the uniform” of Navy personnel fired at an Indian fishing trawler north of Talaimannar island on Monday. There was no word from the Tigers on the charge.

The Media Centre for National Security claimed that the incident took place at 5 p.m and one of the Indians onboard the trawler named TN 09-MFB 111 sustained injuries in the incident.

It said the Indian fishermen were “accused by the LTTE terrorists in Tamil saying ‘you are in the High Security Zone’ ” before they were attacked. “The motive behind the attack was to bring discredit to the Sri Lanka Navy.”

In another development, two former Ministers of the Rajapaksa Government, Mangala Samaraweera and Sripathi Sooriyaarachchi, broke ranks with the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and sat on the Opposition benches on Tuesday.

The two , who were sacked by the President in February, have decided to float a new political entity to be called Sri Lanka Freedom Party (Mahajana Wing).

The split would not have any impact on the ruling party as it has the backing of 25 members of the splinter group of the main Opposition, the United National Party (UNP).

On Tuesday, the Government demonstrated its majority in Parliament when the House approved supplementary estimates for government expenditure. Mr. Samaraweera is scheduled to make a statement explaining his political decision to cross over to the Opposition benches on Wednesday in Parliament. Mr. Sooriyaarachchi has requested permission from the Speaker for a personal statement.

In identical letters to the Speaker, Mr. Samaraweera and Mr. Sooriyaarachchi said they had chosen to float a new wing of the SLFP as “the main coalition partner of the UPFA, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, has seen its principles and political philosophy betrayed by the present Government.

They have rejected the party’s Centrist policies and are taking our country in an extreme direction. We are totally opposed to this path of extremism, and in order to protect the principles of the SLFP, Member of Parliament for Gampaha district, Mr. Sripathi Sooriyaarachchi and I have decided to sit in the Opposition benches of Parliament as MPs of the UPFA”.

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