AUG. 3, 1989
Buddhist priest killed in Sri Lanka fighting
By ADAM KELLIHER
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Sinhalese radicals stormed a Buddhist temple Thursday and killed one of Sri Lanka's highest-ranking priests on the eve of a general strike the extremists called to mark last week's deaths of more than 150 anti-Indian protesters, officials said.
The actions by the Sinhalese for People's Liberation Front, known by its Sinhalese acronym JVP, came as an official reported six days of talks in New Delhi between Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ranjan Wijeratne and Indian negotiators concluded with little progress over Colombo's call for India to withdraw its troops from the Tamil-dominated northeast.
President Ranasinghe Premadasa had demanded New Delhi's 60,000-strong force leave by last Saturday, the second anniversary of a plan under which they were deployed to try to end a rebellion against the Buddhist Sinhalese government by the mostly Hindu Tamils.
Premadasa wanted the Indians out to defuse the JVP's ultra-nationalist insurrection, which has left some 3,000 people dead this year and is causing grave instability in Sinhalese areas of the war-ravaged island republic.
India maintains it will extract its forces -- who are fighting a Tamil rebel group that rejects the pact -- only when Colombo grants the northeast the autonomy envisaged in the July 29, 1987, accord.
A senior Sri Lankan official reported Wijeratne and his Indian counterpart, Narasimha Rao, could not agree on a phased devolving of powers and withdrawal of troops to be completed by December, after Indian general elections.
'The positions taken up by the two sides are not matching,' he told United Press International. 'We are still in a deadlock.'
Wijeratne was scheduled to return Friday.
In Colombo, police reported five JVP gunmen with automatic weapons drove into the compound of a temple in the city's northeastern Kolonnawa suburb and killed one of the nation's highest ranking Buddhist priests.
The Rev. Kotikawatte Saddhatissa Thera, in his 70s, recently endorsed on television Premadasa's offer to negotiate with the JVP to try to bring peace.
Military officials reported an army squad defused a bomb containing about 20 pounds of explosives in front of a row of shops near a police depot that was raided Wednesday.
Four explosions preceded the Wednesday evening raid by 10 JVP fighters who stormed Sri Lanka's largest police base, where they took 14 guns from the armory and fought a 20-minute firefight before retreating.
The operation left 11 people wounded and again proved the group's ability to strike at key installations, usually with inside help from security personnel, some of whom are reported to sympathize with the anti-government drive.
Elsewhere, JVP cadres put up posters and verbally instructed employees of government offices, businesses and shops to takepart in a nationwide general strike Friday to mark the deaths of more than 150 people in widespread anti-Indian protests the previous Friday.
Officials also reported JVP gunmen late Wednesday entered the ancestral home of a ruling United National Party legislator, P.L. Abeyratne, and herded all nine occupants into the living room of the house in Ingririya village, 35 miles south of Colombo.
The attackers opened fire with automatic weapons, killing the nine, who the officials identified as Abeyratne's two uncles, an aunt, one niece, two nephews one servant and two visitors.
The JVP has killed numerous UNP members, officials and security personnel, and frequently target the relatives of prominent but well-guarded figures.
Most JVP members are dispossessed left-wing students and while they have no clear manifesto, experts hold their plan is to replace the government with an authoritarian regime espousing Sinhalese chauvinism.
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https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/08/03/Buddhist-priest-killed-in-Sri-Lanka-fighting/8323618120000/