Sri Lanka's president rejected international appeals for cease-fire in his nation's bloody civil war Thursday, as the Tamil Tiger rebels vowed never to surrender to the advancing government forces. The defiant declarations came in the face of growing calls for Sri Lanka to halt its offensive against the rebels' last stronghold in the northeast to allow an estimated 50,000 civilians to flee the war zone. “The government is not ready to enter into any kind of cease fire with the terrorists,” President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in his first public comments since the British and French foreign ministers asked him to accept a humanitarian truce. Rajapaksa said his government was trying to rescue the trapped civilians, and appeared impatient at the continued demands for him to call off his forces. “It is my duty to protect the people of this country. I don't need lectures from Western representatives,” he said, according to highlights of a speech he delivered in the southeastern town of Embilipitiya that were distributed by his office. Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the president's brother, said the war would not end until rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is captured or killed, according to a newspaper. The rebels, meanwhile, called on the international community to work harder to stop the war _ while also saying they wouldn't give up their fight. “If any country really cares about these people, I ask that country to go beyond its ‘diplomatic boundaries' for the sake of saving human lives and make Sri Lanka stop this genocidal war,” rebel political chief Balasingam Nadesan said in interview.
