Sri Lankan Official Assassinated

Sri Lanka's foreign minister, who led efforts to ban the country's Tamil Tiger rebels as a terrorist organization, was fatally shot by unidentified snipers after a swim at his home late Friday, officials said. The military blamed the rebels.

Lakshman Kadirgamar, 73, was shot was shot at about 11 p.m. local time in the head and the heart and taken to the National Hospital in the capital, Colombo, where doctors were unable to save him, said Inspector General of Police, Chandra Fernando. He said Kadirgamar had just returned to his heavily guarded home in Colombo when snipers hiding in nearby buildings opened fire.

"The injuries were critical and he has gone," said Media Minister Dilan Perera.

Fernando said the minister had just finished a swim at his home when he was shot.

Kadirgamar, a member of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, was highly critical of the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam and led an international campaign to ban the Tigers as a terrorist organization. He was a close aide of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who appointed him foreign minister in April 2004.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting, but military spokesman Brig. Daya Ratnayake said police in the past week had arrested two Tamil men who were taking video of the area around Kadirgamar's house.

"We have reasons to believe that he was killed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam," said Ratnayake. "He was always under threat."

Rebel attacks against Sri Lankan political leaders were common until a February 2002 cease-fire.

In 1999, Kumaratunga was gravely wounded in a rebel assassination attempt that killed 26 people. On Friday, she rushed to the hopsital to be with Kadirgamar.

Tensions between the government and the Tigers have spiked recently amid a surge in violence in the volatile eastern region that has sometimes spilled into Colombo.

Scores of people — including security forces, rebels and civilians — have been killed since a senior Tiger leader split from the mainstream group last year with some 6,000 fighters. Each side has blamed the other for the violence.

On Thursday, Anton Balasingham, the London-based chief negotiator for the Tamil Tiger rebels, warned that Sri Lanka could slip back into civil war unless the government stopped backing armed groups that the rebels claim are attacking them.

Balasingham accused the government of paying and providing logistics support to paramilitary groups, allowing the armed forces to "sustain a shadow war" against the rebels.

He called it a grave violation of a 2002 cease-fire agreement between the rebels and the government, which denies supporting paramilitaries.

The Tamil Tigers began fighting in 1983 for a separate homeland for minority ethnic Tamils in the country's north and east, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. The conflict killed nearly 65,000 people before the February 2002 cease-fire.

Post-truce peace talks have been stalled since 2003 over rebel demands for wide autonomy.