COLOMBO: Sri Lanka has said that some western countries had exerted pressures on the government to end the military campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009; however, President Mahinda Rajapaksa refused to succumb to pressures.
“Some countries sent advance teams and even were ready to send ships. But the President (Mahinda Rajapaksa) refused to give in,” the Sri Lankan government spokesman and minister of information Keheliya Rambukwella said at a gathering in the central district of Kandy.
Rambukwella said that some countries had put pressure on Sri Lanka when the war was reaching a decisive stage in 2009.
His reference to the international pressure was apparently aimed at the visit of the then British Foreign Minister David Miliband and his then French counterpart Bernard Kouchner to meet Rajapaksa in 2009.
The Sri Lankan military defeated the LTTE in May 2009 after a 26-year military campaign, bringing the civil war to an end.
