Colombo (AsiaNews/Agencies) - President Chandrika Kumaratunga has declared a state of emergency following the assassination of her Foreign Minister. Police and the military say Tamil Tiger rebels are their prime suspects. The killing deals another blow to the shaky Sri Lankan peace process.
"A state of emergency has been declared to ensure national security," presidential spokesman Harim Peiris said after holding an emergency meeting with Mrs Kumaratunga. "It is a legal measure to enable the free deployment of emergency troops," he added.
Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar died early today after he was shot by a suspected sniper in the garden of his central Colombo home. Mr Kadirgamar had campaigned to outlaw the Tigers internationally and had long been at the top of their hit list. The Tigers were not immediately available for comment. Soldiers have started door-to-door searches for the killers in Colombo, while police set up road blocks and Air Force helicopters circled the night sky.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan led international condemnation of what he called a "criminal and senseless" murder.
Mr Kadirgamar had been Foreign Minister under Mrs Kumaratunga since 1994, with a break between 2001 and 2004, and claimed credit for getting the Tigers declared a terrorist organisation abroad.
A close confidante of Mrs Kumaratunga, he was one of the most tightly guarded ministers in the Sri Lankan Cabinet and had nearly 100 elite bodyguards deployed to protect him.
Only days earlier, police had drawn up plans to further improve Mr Kadirgamar's security with the deployment of additional guards.
Mr Kadirgamar, himself a member of the minority Tamil community and a native of Jaffna, the heartland of Tamil separatism in the island's north, was a vociferous opponent of the Tamil Tigers.
The Tigers refused to acknowledge him as a member of their community and dubbed him a traitor to their cause of setting up a separate homeland for mainly Hindu Tamils within majority-Buddhist and Singhalese Sri Lanka.