Sri Lanka says Tigers defeated

By C. Bryson Hull and Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Saturday said the Tamil Tigers had been militarily defeated as soldiers seized control of the entire coastline for the first time in a 25-year war.

Rajapaksa, on a visit to Jordan, said he would return to Sri Lanka on Sunday "as a leader of a nation that vanquished terrorism."

Rajapaksa spoke after troops took control of the Indian Ocean island nation's entire coast for the first time since war broke out in 1983, cutting off the Tigers' last hope of escape from a military advance aimed at crushing separatist resistance.

Intelligence reports indicated that Vellupillai Prabhakaran, founder-leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and other leaders were surrounded by soldiers in barely a square km (half a sq mile) of land near the northeastern coast.

The LTTE's conventional defeat has been a foregone conclusion for months. The only question remaining has been the fate of tens of thousands of people the United Nations and others say the Tigers are holding in harm's way as human shields.

Explosions rocked the battlefield as the LTTE set off its ammo dumps, the military said.

"My government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation finally defeated the LTTE militarily," Rajapaksa told a meeting of 11 developing nations in Jordan.

A presidential official who declined to be named said Rajapaksa's statement was not the official declaration of victory, which would come in a TV address after his return.

Nearly 11,900 people fled rebel areas on Saturday, bringing the total to more than 25,000 since Thursday, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

TIGERS WARNING

The LTTE said a conventional defeat would only result in a new phase of Asia's longest modern war.

"Colombo's approach, to finish the war in 48 hours through a carnage and bloodbath of civilians, will never resolve a conflict of decades," the pro-rebel website www.TamilNet.com quoted the LTTE's S. Pathmanathan as saying.

"On the contrary, it will only escalate the crisis to unforeseen heights."

Pathmanathan, believed by diplomats to be somewhere in southeast Asia, has for years been the Tigers' chief weapons procurer, and is wanted by Interpol.

The Tigers have answered early battlefield losses with suicide bombings in the capital, Colombo. Their widespread use of assassinations and suicide blasts has prompted the United States, European Union and India to class them as terrorists.