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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AtulaSiriwardane" data-source="post: 3378374" data-attributes="member: 120286">Sri Lanka’s army chief says the government has won its 25-year war against the Tamil Tigers. This is not trueReuters<img src="http://media.economist.com/images/20080705/2708AS1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /><a href="http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11671129#footnote1" target="_blank">Corrections to this article</a>MAHINDA RAJAPAKSE, Sri Lanka’s president, shakes out his white outfit and spreads his bare toes with a satisfied air. “We have concentrated on the LTTE [the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam],” he says, “because unless we defeat them, we will have no peace and development.” In January he abrogated a ceasefire and stepped up a brutal two-year offensive against the no-less-brutal LTTE. This week his army commander, General Sarath Fonseka, claimed the operation had succeeded. The Tigers, said the general, had lost the capability of fighting as a conventional army. “We have defeated them.”The Tigers have not surrendered and would presumably disagree. But the president’s brother, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is also defence secretary, says the government has a once-in-a-generation chance to crush them. General Fonseka claims the Tigers have lost 9,000 fighters since 2006. They were driven from one big Tamil town, Jaffna, in 1995. Now they no longer pose a threat to another, Trincomalee.</blockquote>

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