By David Gray
PUTTUMATALAN, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Indian envoys met Sri Lanka's president on Friday after New Delhi demanded a truce in the closing phase of a 25-year war which U.N. data says may have killed almost 6,500 people in the last three months.
A few kms (miles) from the front, thousands of refugees languished in the blazing tropical sun awaiting transport from the battlezone, where the military is fighting to deal a death blow to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Aid agencies warned that those still trapped in the battlezone had little access to food, water and medical care.
Explosions boomed and smoke billowed from the remaining battlefield, formerly an army-declared no-fire zone but now all that remains of the self-declared state the LTTE has fought since the early 1970s to create for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils.
"We are clearing mines and other entrapments. The progress has almost stopped because we have come across these things," 58th Army Division commander Brigadier Shavendra Silva told Reuters in Puttumatalan, on the northeastern coast.
The military said more than 108,000 people had poured out of the dwindling rebel area since Monday, when troops blasted an earth barrier the LTTE built to block movement in or out of it.
Diplomatic pressure over the war has boiled over this week with the U.N. Security Council, the United States, India and others demanding Sri Lanka stop its offensive and the LTTE surrender to avert civilian casualties.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and National Security Adviser M.K Narayanan flew into Colombo on Friday for a meeting with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and then returned to India, Sri Lankan and Indian officials said.
There was no word on the content of their discussion.
Thursday's call for a truce was a swift public reversal by India's Congress party-led ruling coalition, which backs efforts to wipe out a group India lists as a terrorist organisation.
NO TRUCE
The military said its offensive had already slowed but would not stop. Silva said 15 soldiers had been killed and 75 wounded in the past few days: "My soldiers are suffering a fair number of casualties because we are trying to protect civilians."
A U.N. working document given to the diplomatic community says 6,432 civilians have been killed and 13,946 have been wounded in fighting since the end of January. Two diplomats verified its authenticity. A U.N. spokesman declined to comment.
Sri Lanka has previously argued U.N. figures are inflated and likely included LTTE fighters masquerading as civilians.
Both sides accuse the other of firing on civilians, and both deny doing so. With access to the war zone limited to most outsiders and nearly all sources inside lacking full independence, getting clear data is difficult.
Sri Lanka is reluctant to allow outsiders in, with the memory of India intervening when the army had the Tigers on the ropes in 1986 still fresh.
Analysts said Friday's Indian visit may not mean any real change in policy, and was more likely to ease election pressure on the Congress party in the Tamil-majority state of Tamil Nadu.
"There is a certain feeling in Tamil Nadu that the central government was not forceful enough in demanding cessation of military operations," said M.K. Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat and a strategic expert.
UN PLAN REJECTED
Separately, Sri Lanka rejected a plan announced by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Thursday to send a humanitarian team to assess the condition of people trapped by the fighting.
Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona said the mission was proposed last week, but circumstances had since changed.
"As these statements were made based on reports prior to the sudden influx of civilians from there, the need of the visit may not arise anymore," Kohona told reporters.
In Geneva, the United Nations refugee agency said in a statement it was starting an emergency airlift of tents and other relief supplies to Sri Lanka, possibly this weekend.
"Aid workers also cite growing problems of malnourishment, lack of transport to move the sick to hospitals and a shortage of medical personnel," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. "Some of the displaced have not eaten for days."
The International Committee of the Red Cross said the situation remained "catastrophic" and that "several tens of thousands of people are still trapped in the conflict area with very little access to medical care, food and water. Sanitation is deplorable."
Sri Lankan authorities were preventing the ICRC from bringing life-saving surgical and medical supplies into the conflict zone, ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno said in Geneva.
The military has cornered the separatists in less than 13 square km (5 square miles) of the northeastern coastline, where the United Nations says 50,000 people are being held as human shields and suffering with little food, water or medical care.
"The LTTE is firing artillery into their own area to make it look like the government is firing artillery," the military's Silva told reporters.
Tiger leaders had ordered fighters to trade their trademark tiger-stripe camouflage fatigues for civilian garb, Silva said intercepted communications had revealed. The guerrilla LTTE has hidden among civilians since they began fighting in the 1970s.
LTTE founder-leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was still hiding in the war zone, Silva said.
The Tigers could not be reached for immediate comment, but they routinely deny attacking people despite numerous witness accounts they have shot at those trying to escape their area.
The LTTE has vowed no surrender and Sri Lanka has ruled out any further humanitarian pauses, wary the Tigers may try to rearm as they have in the past.
Journalists saw thousands of people in the coastal village of Puttumatalan during a military-chaperoned trip on Friday.
Belongings were strewn all over the main A-35 road, discarded in the haste to escape the LTTE-held area. Soldiers gave people food and water, and a group of about 50 people bathed in a ditch.
(Additional reporting by Bryson Hull and Ranga Sirilal, Writing by Bryson Hull; Editing by Diana Abdallah)
