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Sri Lanka increases defense budget by dlrs 180 ml |
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May 17, 2000 COLOMBO, MAY 16 (AP) - Sri Lanka's government Tuesday said it was increasing its defense spending for the year 2000 by dlrs 180 million to help fight Tamil Tiger separatists.
"We are buying new weapons and other military hardware from seven different countries and we need the extra money to make the purchases," Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar told reporters.
Sri Lanka's current defense budget is dlrs 700 million and with the increase, Kadirgamar said, it will reach dlrs 880 million.
Rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam began a lightning advance in March to retake their former capital, Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka. Jaffna was their capital for five years until the military wrested control of it in 1995.
In recent fighting, the rebels forced 10,000 government soldiers to withdraw from a causeway linking Jaffna to the rest of the country. On Tuesday, they attacked one of the military's defense lines near the city.
The Sri Lankan government has imposed censorship on war reporting. Kadirgamar said he was personally against any form of censorship, but justified the administration's action by saying that some journalists tended to be biased in their reporting of the conflict.
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