Police and the Security forces were placed on a heightened state of alert in Trincomalee to prevent any untoward incident from taking place following an LTTE call for a full day’s hartal today, as a number of Sinhala organisations from the South had joined the fasting families of two homeguards abducted by the Tigers, a Security forces spokesman said.

The Trincomalee Tamil People’s Forum (TTPF), an LTTE front, issued a statement yesterday appealing to the Tamils in Trinco-malee to unite and participate in the hartal to express their support for the LTTE’s ISGA proposals and to urge the international community, including the US to pressure the Sinhala political parties to take steps to resume the Peace process instead of pressuring the LTTE.

Meanwhile, the Secretary General of the Government’s Peace Secretariat, Jayantha Dhanapala is scheduled to make his inaugural visit, since taking office, to the port city of Trincomalee where he is expected to confer with officials of the SLMM and other organisations in the district.

The TTPF appealed to all government and private institutions, schools, banks, business establishments, etc. to put up shutters and has also asked that vehicles be kept off the roads during the hartal.

The organisation’s statement said the hartal was being organised to condemn the "illegal construction of Buddhist vihares and the creation of Sinhala colonies in the district under cover of the Ceasefire agreement."

It also said the activities of "unpatriotic and communal forces," against peace and communal organisations, using Trincomalee as the base to instigate and carry out violent acts against the Tamils, should be opposed.

It called on the people to "salute the 12 LTTE cadres including Kumarappa and Pulendran, who were killed 17 years ago, through a plot between the Sri Lanka government and India."

The statement said the hartal was also to condemn statements issued by the security establishment applying pressure on the LTTE to withdraw and dismantle its bunkers from close to their forward defence lines while at the same time constructing new sentry points and strengthing their defences in the north and east and to condemn the assaults on human rights commission officials in Jaffna and to protest against the speech made at the UN General Assembly by President Kumaratunga recently.