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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nismok" data-source="post: 6618638" data-attributes="member: 109094">COLOMBO — Sri Lankan police and troops began a crackdown Friday  against thousands of military deserters after a large number failed to  heed a surrender call, military officials said.Some 1,400  soldiers who were absent without leave turned up at military camps  Thursday to take advantage of an amnesty declared to coincide with Sri  Lanka's national holiday marking the island's 1948 independence.But  thousands more were still listed as deserters, a military official  said."From today (Friday), the army and the police will step up  search operations to arrest deserters," the official, who declined to be  named, said.Military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara confirmed that  1,422 troops who were listed as deserters surrendered Thursday but added  others were yet to respond.In a bid to clean up its rolls, Sri  Lanka's military formally discharged last October nearly 25,000 army,  navy and airforce personnel who deserted at the height of fighting with  Tamil rebels.But since then more troops have left the security  forces without permission.The clean-up of the military rolls came  after government forces defeated the Tamil Tiger separatists in May  2009 following decades of bloody ethnic conflict.Even though  fighting has ended, the military still wants to recruit new troops to  fill vacancies in the 200,000-strong army and deploy them in areas of  the north and east captured from the Tamil rebels.   AFP</blockquote>

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