Jaffna Mayor calls for talks

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 August 1998, 23:59 GMT]
Jaffna Mayor K. Sivapalan (Tamil United Liberation Front), told an international group of journalists that talks to end the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka should involve all parties, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), said sources in Jaffna.

Journalists who were in Sri Lanka to cover the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit held in Colombo last week, were taken by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) to Jaffna in a special flight. There were 38 journalists in the group.

Mr. Sivapalan also said that the Jaffna Municipal Council and other local bodies in Jaffna lacked funds to function and thus these bodies existed in name only.

The SLA took journalists on a tour of the areas under their control but did not allow them to speak to the Jaffna public alone, said sources.