Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the international truce monitoring group in Sri Lanka's faltering Norwegian backed peace process with the Tamil Tigers, said Sunday it will wind-up its operations on Wednesday in the coming week.
Pia Hansson, the SLMM spokesman told reporters that all their district offices in Vavuniya district in the north, Batticaloa and Trincomalee districts in the east have been already shut down with the government announcement to abrogate the ceasefire with effect from Jan. 16.
Hansson said the office in the northern district of Jaffna would wind-up on next Monday.
The SLMM was set up as an international group to monitor the ceasefire violations in terms of the Feb. 22, 2002 truce agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Both sides were blamed for massive violations of the truce since the agreement had been signed.
Despite the truce the violence in the north and east reached massive scale with over 5,000 people being killed since the end of2005.
Both sides however refused to withdraw from ceasefire until the government announced on Jan. 2 its decision to abrogate.
The SLMM, originally consisted of members from Nordic countries, came to be restricted in May 2006 to members from Norway and Iceland.
This was following the LTTE request that all truce monitors representing the European Union (EU) in the SLMM be withdrawn as a direct result of the EU declaring the LTTE a terrorist organization.
Source:Xinhua
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