Friday night’s assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar at his private Bullers Lane residence by a suspected LTTE sniper has forced President Chandrika Kumaratunga to weigh her options but quitting the Oslo-arranged Cease-fire Agreement (CFA) is not among them, official and diplomatic sources said yesterday.

Kadirgamar is the first politician felled by a sniper and only the second prominent sniper victim, the first being EPRLF heavyweight Robert assassinated in Jaffna.

Authoritative government sources said that the government would not quit the over three-year-old agreement. According to the agreement (clause 4.4) it would remain in force until notice of termination is given by either party to Norwegian facilitators. But notice has to be given 14 days in advance of the effective date of termination.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga has advised that the assassination would be raised with the Norwegian facilitators and the LTTE at the highest level but there would not be a return to war.

A highly placed official acknowledged that the assassin had escaped. "He had ample time to escape," he said. At the time of the assassination there had been over a dozen army commandos with the minister, he said. Their first priority had been to rush Kadirgamar wounded in the head and the chest to the National Hospital, he said. By the time troops and police mounted road blocks the assassin could have moved to a safe house, most probably within the city.

He ruled out the possibility of the assassin trying to cross the Omanthai entry and exit point.

Another official ridiculed the decision to intensify checks at Omanthai.

"It only creates hell of a long queue on the government’s side," he said. He said that it would be absurd to even to think the assassin would try to cross the line," a senior policeman said. "The assassin would be safe in the city as we don’t have a clue about his identity," he said. He did not rule out the possibility of the assassin being a woman.

The assassin had used the second floor of the neighbouring house owned by Lakshman Thalaysingham, a son of retired SP Thalaysingham to target Kadirgamar.

According to retired senior DIG H. M. G. B. Kotakadeniya Thalaysingham who lives with his wife would not have collaborated with the LTTE. "They lived downstairs and may have been unaware of what was going on upstairs," he said, while stressing the need to conduct a full investigation.

A squad of police commandos had been the first to reach Kadirgamar’s private residence. No one had been there at the time. After making an immediate assessment they identified the house from where the shots had been fired. They had found the gate closed and after failing to get the occupants to come out they had jumped over the gate. They had virtually smashed opened the front door after Lakshman Thalaysingham, a former Royal cricket captain refused to open the door. "We never searched any other house."

They had not found anything suspicious in the ground floor. On the top floor they found an empty 40 mm grenade cartridge and in the toilet from where the shots were fired they found a tripod about five feet in height with a seat fixed to it. "I have not seen anything like it before," an officer who visited the house told The Sunday Island. "It was not really a tripod. It is something they have specially designed to accommodate an assassin who had to take a target from a difficult position," he said. Police found more pipes and other items necessary to further modify it. Police believe the gadget had been brought in pieces and then assembled.

It was similar to the plot in De Gaulle assassination attempt.

Investigators recovered five rounds of empty 7.62 ammunition from the scene. Police believe the assassin had used a Chinese assault weapon equipped with a silencer against Kadirgamar.

Of the five shots two had hit Kadirgamar on his chest and the rest the wall behind him. The weapon had been brought in a box made to hold a pedestal fan. Police also found a cricketer bag kit with a sticker on one side declaring it the property of Lalith Athulathmudali Vidyalaya and on the other the name of a national cricketer Russel Arnold. It contained cheese, chocolates, murukku and bottled water.

Thalaysingham had insisted that he was not aware of anything going on upstairs. He had claimed that he returned from the Otters Aquatic club and did not hear anything. He was subsequently taken into custody.

Police said that no one could have entered the top floor without going through the ground floor. In fact the door to the top floor had been closed with the key in place at the time the commandos entered the house.

Police believe that there had been at least one more person with the assassin. They appeared to have left from the rear door, jumped the parapet wall using a car parked there to get a leg up. A little distance away they had left a 40 mm grenade launcher and six rounds of 40 mm cartridges.

Investigators believe the hit squad left the grenade launcher and the ammunition before getting in their getaway vehicle.

A senior army official said that Kadirgamar had just finished a swim at the pool at his private residence. According to him Kadirgamar was shot seconds after he came out of the pool. The assassin had shot him twice on the chest. He had arched backwards, the bullets penetrating his chest propelling him backwards and hit his head on a concrete slab resulting in horrific head injuries.

According to a source close to the family the flood-lit pool area had been under LTTE surveillance for some time. Mrs. Kadirgamar had seen her husband being shot as he stood a little distance away from the pool in the flood-lit garden. As she ran towards the fallen minister his bodyguards had warned her off as at least two other shots hit the nearby wall.

Kadirgamar had arrived at his private home with his wife after attending a function at the BMICH also attended by Indian High Commissioner Ms Nerupama Rao. Kadirgamar despite repeated warnings insisted on regularly visiting the Bullers lane residence for a swim.

"He considered it a minor risk worth taking," an informed source said. His security was geared to prevent a suicide attack on him. The military felt that the LTTE would go for suicide attack on his armour-plated vehicle as it would not have been easy to send a "human bomb" near Kadirgamar.

Following the assassination, the government declared emergency empowering security forces to conduct searches in the city. But the arrests, if any, would not be made under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) suspended under the CFA. The operations would be conducted "under due process of law with the Criminal Procedure Code."

Inspectors’ Association Chairman Inspector Dale Gunaratne accused the government of deceiving the people. "What is the use in declaring emergency without implementing the PTA," he said while expressing disbelief the government could not comprehend the enemy’s strategy.

Gunaratne echoed Kotakadeniya’s assessment that the war has taken a new turn with Kadirgamar assassination.

Gunaratne dismissed the notion that the Karuna faction could have ordered the hit as part of its strategy to undermine the peace process. Police officials speaking on the condition of anonymity emphasised that there was no doubt the LTTE assassinated Kadirgamar.

The Inspectors’ Association censured the government for turning a Nelsonian eye towards the LTTE atrocities.