Impending peace initiatives and a ceasefire in the offing overrode decisions of the government to confront the LTTE during the alleged December 19 Tiger terrorist shipment of arms and ammunition.
Minister Marapana told the Daily Mirror "if we engaged them without being one hundred per cent sure it wouldn't have contributed to the peace initiative."
He also said since the Tigers had announced the ceasefire the Government was not willing to engage them without absolute certainty.
The LTTE announced its ceasefire a couple of days earlier and it was reciprocated by the UNF government in view of the peace initiative that it hoped to undertake through discussions and negotiations. The ceasefire came into effect on December 24 midnight.
Meanwhile, despite intelligence reports received as early as September that a Tiger shipment of arms and ammunitions would be sent across the Government was unable to target them without confirmation.
He said that due to bad weather and poor visibility it could not be confirmed whether they were hostile boats or not. "We could not get any visuals on them," he said.He said at a time when cloudy conditions prevailed the "Navy didn't want to get involved in this" and that the security forces had not been negligent on their part in assessing the situation they were confronted with at the time.
The Navy had attempted to move into the area following the detection of five boats by the Air Force. The Navy had tried to get through to the location but had not been directed by the Air Force which had reported the boats were 70 miles off Mullaitivu.
(http://www.dailymirror.lk/archives/dmr030102/News/tig.html)
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