Lanka says final standoff with LTTE near

Sri Lankas military on Thursday said it has one kilometer left to go before trapping the Tamil Tigers separatists in a no-fire zone...

Sri Lankas military on Thursday said it has one kilometer left to go before trapping the Tamil Tigers separatists in a no-fire zone,along with thousands of civilians at grave risk in the 25-year wars final act.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa,under pressure to craft a political deal,has called for a meeting with parliamentarians allied with the Tigers,but they have refused until the Government resolves the humanitarian crisis faced by civilians trapped in the fighting.

Now the area is 21 sq km and only 1 sq km left other than the safe zone,military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

The Tigers also tried a counterattack on Wednesday,which soldiers repelled. A total of 30 rebels were killed altogether on Wednesday,he said. The Tigers could not be reached for comment.

The military-declared no-fire zone and the remaining kilometre outside of it are all that remain of 15,000 square km the LTTE held less than three years ago and tried to turn into a separate nation for Sri Lankas Tamil minority.

The military has not revealed what it will do once it reaches the no-fire zone,but diplomats are urging it to besiege the Tigers instead of moving in to attack them,risking civilian lives in the process.

The Government says it is not firing into the no-fire zone and that the UN numbers are unsubstantiated,while the Tigers say people are staying with them out of choice.

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President Rajapaksa invited members of the Tamil National Alliance TNA to talks this week. But the LTTE-allied TNA on Thursday said at a press conference that they would not talk with Rajapaksa until the civilian crisis was resolved.

Facing imminent conventional defeat,the Tigers,for the first time in years,unleashed surface-to-air missiles against a pair of Sri Lankan air force helicopters evacuating casualties on Wednesday. Both missed their targets,the air force said.

The former Tiger commander Karuna Amman,now a non-cabinet minister in Rajapaksas Government,told Reuters in a recent interview that a large cache of shoulder-fired rockets were lost during the December 26,2004 tsunami.