Colombo: Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga on June 25 warned that rebel Tigers, who pulled out of peace talks in April, were preparing for war and that the security forces were ill-prepared to meet a threat to the Northern peninsula of Jaffna.

Kumaratunga, who is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, felt that the Tigers were ready for a repeat of the 1995 peace process with her when the rebels abruptly pulled out of negotiations and returned to war, the President's spokesman Harim Peiris said.

Peiris said the Tigers were behaving in the same way they did just before a previous peace process with Kumaratunga ended up in failure and led to more fighting in April 1995.

"Indications are that things that happened in 1995 are happening again.... media controlled by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) attacked the President then and now they are attacking the (peace) process.

"They are making impossible demands, rearming themselves, eliminating opponents and destroying the capability of the military intelligence... I can't give a timeframe for when the fighting will resume, but there are educated guesses."

Troops had ammunition to last them only 10 days in the event of a major rebel onslaught to retake their former stronghold of Jaffna, he quoted the President as saying.

"The President believes that LTTE is once again preparing to go to war," he said.

PTI