State Of Emergency In Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka declared a state of emergency and deployed troops to search for suspects Saturday after the assassination of the foreign minister, while the government warned the slaying was a serious setback to the country's fragile peace process.

The military blamed the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels for the death of 73-year-old Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was shot in the head and heart late Friday by snipers after finishing a swim at his home. Kadirgamar, an ethnic Tamil himself, had led efforts to ban the Tamil rebels as a terrorist organization but later backed peace negotiations.

The rebel group's political chief on Saturday denied any role in the killing and criticized officials for "hastily blaming" the group.

"We also know that there are factions within the Sri Lankan Armed forces operating with a hidden agenda to sabotage the cease-fire agreement," said S.P. Tamilselvan. He urged Colombo to thoroughly investigate the killing.

Officials said seven suspects have been detained for questioning.

Kadirgamar's death was sure to put pressure on the cease-fire between the government and the separatist rebels — a truce already shaken by a two-year stall in peace talks.

"It is a grave setback to the peace process. Restarting (the peace process) will be seriously undermined," Jayantha Dhanapala, head of the government body handling the peace process, told reporters.

Kadirgamar will be publicly cremated in the capital on Monday with state honors, a Cabinet member said, adding that the government declared it a day of mourning and ordered all the country's cinemas, liquor shops and meat vendors to close that day.

The Tigers began fighting in 1983 for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. The conflict killed nearly 65,000 people before the Norwegian-brokered cease-fire in 2002.

On Saturday, the government said it would not take any unilateral action that will amount to violating the cease-fire with the rebels but pledged to take precautions to safeguard its citizens against terror attacks.

Government spokesman Nimal Siripala de Silva said the rebel denial of involvement in the killing was "extremely difficult to accept."

The Defense Ministry tightened security across the tropical island, deploying troops to check vehicles in the capital and sending military aircraft to monitor the movement of the rebels.

"We have taken the steps" to safeguard our people, said Harim Peiris, a spokesman for President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Kumaratunga, who survived an assassination attempt in 1999, declared a state of emergency Saturday and appealed "for calm and restraint in the face of this grave and cowardly attack" on Kadirgamar.

Governments worldwide also condemned the killing as an act of terror and urged the country not to let the slaying drag it back into civil war.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she knew Kadirgamar as a man who had worked hard for peace. "Together, we must honor his memory by rededicating ourselves to peace and ensuring that the cease-fire remains in force," she said in statement released in Washington.

India called the assassination a "terrorist crime" and reiterated its support to the island nation's fight against forces seeking to undermine its unity.

During a state of emergency, authorities have the power to detain without charge anybody suspected of involvement in terrorist activities and to search and demolish buildings.

As dawn broke over Colombo, dozens of military trucks moved into the city and soldiers took up positions at major intersections.

The military checked all vehicles coming in and out of the capital, Brig. Daya Ratnayake said.

Navy patrol boats also were ordered to guard the coastline, some of which is controlled by the Tigers.

Late Friday, elite soldiers and policemen cordoned off the area where the killing occurred, conducting house-to-house searches.

Police officer Nimal Lewke said two of the snipers had hidden in a building near Kadirgamar's heavily guarded home in Colombo's diplomatic district and fired through a ventilation hole in an upper floor.

Police found cheese and chocolates they ate while they waited for their target, along with a grenade launcher intended as a backup weapon.

Ratnayake blamed the rebels for the killing.

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

An Oxford-educated lawyer, Kadirgamar led an international campaign against the Tigers, who remain on terrorist lists in five countries, including the United States and Britain.

Rebel attacks against Sri Lankan political leaders were once common. Kumaratunga was gravely wounded in the 1999 assassination attempt. Police blamed Tamil rebels for that attack, which killed 26 people.

Such high-level attacks stopped after the cease-fire, but tensions recently have increased between the government and the rebels. There has been a surge of attacks in the volatile eastern region, occasionally spilling into the capital, Colombo.

"The situation has deteriorated," said Hagrup Haukland, chief of a team of European truce monitors. "It's a big, big blow to the cease-fire and the whole peace process irrespective of who is behind this."

He said it was "too early to speculate if there was going to be an outbreak of war."

Kadirgamar, a Tamil Christian who was a close aide to Kumaratunga, was appointed foreign minister in April 2004 and held the position from 1994 to 2001.

Public Security Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake said Kadirgamar's body will lay in state at his official residence until Monday, when it will be cremated Monday in Colombo's Independence Square, where Sri Lanka was declared free from British colonial rule in 1948.