” ” As many as 14 Tamil rebels seem to have died in the government’s offensive, on this day alone. Colombo’s army is moving on, with difficulty but determinedly, in the territory that is controlled by the Tamil Tigers. However, warn the religious leaders of the country, without true justice or true dialogue, peace remains a distant goal. A few days ago, the archbishop of Colombo, Oswald Gomis, had said the Church is worried about the Government’s inability to find a negotiated solution to the civil war. In addition, the archbishop strongly condemns as reported by the agency Ucan the murder of Thiagarajah Maheswaran, a political leader from the Tamil minority group, who was killed on 1st January by a hired killer while he was praying in a Hindu temple in the capital, Colombo. His bodyguard died and 11 people were hurt as well. In his message, published the day after the killing, the archbishop expressed his sympathy with the family as well as his concern for this inability to stop the violence. The archbishop also asked the Government "to immediately speed up the search for a lasting solution" to the conflict. The former minister Maheswaran, who works in the defence of the human rights of his people, had threatened to publish the details of what he called "a terror-mongering campaign" against the Tamils in the Jaffna peninsula.
