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The reason for the call - real or ostensible - is to allow thousands of Tamil civilians trapped by the conflict to flee to safety. The number of civilians caught up in a northeastern strip of land varies from 20,000 to 50,000.

To those unacquainted with the reality of the situation, the call, nay demand, for a humanitarian pause would seem reasonable enough. But those who call for a ceasefire - the UN, the US and European Union in particular - are well aware of the reality. This is what makes it difficult to understand the logic behind a cease-fire unless the humanitarian concerns expressed are intended to serve another purpose like attracting broader international support and provide a convenient smokescreen for shenanigans elsewhere.

Such demands are intended perhaps to intensify the pressure on the Sri Lanka government to relent and call off the military action, thus providing oxygen to the Tigers.

If conceded it would only allow the Tamil Tigers, already banned as a terrorist organisation in those very countries demanding a ceasefire, the respite it needs to regroup and reorganise, if not for its leadership to try to escape from Sri Lanka and sow more mayhem another day.

Sri Lanka learnt that bitter lesson when the 1987 Indian intervention helped the cornered Tiger leaders to escape and engage in armed violence for another two decades.

The governments and organisations that demand a ceasefire including the UN have admitted the Tigers are holding thousands of Tamil civilians in the "safe zone" as virtual hostages. The civilians provide a "human shield" against the Sri Lanka forces that now surround the Tiger leadership, preventing a final assault.

Those who demand a cease-fire have also acknowledged that the LTTE is preventing its own people from crossing to safety and has in fact shot and killed or maimed those who tried. This is substantiated by numerous civilians who managed to flee from the Tigers, leaving behind their slain or wounded family members or companions.

From the standpoint of the Tigers, these Tamil civilians serve as their only salvation right now, and they would prevent any from leaving even if they have to shoot some to enforce their edict.

As long as the civilians are there, the Tigers can delay the final battle. Time is what they desperately need so that organised demonstrations by the Tamil diaspora abroad can continue to pressure foreign governments, as is happening now in London, Toronto and elsewhere.

Those protests, which have led to attacks on the London diplomatic missions of India and China and the Sri Lanka missions in London and Toronto, are intended to pressure Western governments to demand that Sri Lanka stop the war and negotiate.

What seems so strange is that some still demand a ceasefire when such a cease-fire is meaningless. How does a ceasefire serve to free the civilians and prevent a "humanitarian crisis" when it is the LTTE, as many of those who are calling for the cease-fire know very well, that is forcefully holding the civilians back as sacrificial lambs?

A thousand ceasefires will not free the civilians as long as the LTTE is not prepared to let them go. They are not prepared because of the logic of the situation.

The most recent cease-fire declared by Sri Lanka serves to illustrate the point. The government announced a cease-fire on April 12 and 13 on account of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. Only some 130 civilians crossed over to the government side.

Late last month the military breached a several-kilometers-long and several-meters-high earth bund that the LTTE had constructed not only as a defensive barrier but also to prevent civilians fleeing.

What happened? Some 100,000 civilians braved the ire and fire of the Tigers to escape through the breached bund. The exodus even took the government by surprise, as it did not expect such a huge number of men, women and children to defy the Tigers all at once.

Was it the ceasefire then that allowed the civilians to escape or the military action that provided a path of escape and so met the humanitarian concerns?

Those who demand a cease-fire cannot be ignorant of this stark fact, for it is some of the very same governments and organisations that have called on the Tigers to surrender and lay down their weapons.

The simple fact is that there would not be any civilians in the way had the Tigers not herded them into their retreat to use as slave labour and combatants. Go back some months and study pro-LTTE websites such as TamilNet, which carried pictures of civilians being given weapons training, calling them a volunteer civil defence force.

Those who preach homilies from afar are hardly able to distinguish a non-combatant civilian from a civilian combatant, or even a hardcore Tiger in civilian dress.

One wonders whether the "humanitarian concerns" trumpeted from abroad are directed only at small countries like Sri Lanka, fighting arguably the most ruthless terrorist group in the world, but exempt the more powerful nations that have decimated and continue to decimate, civilian populations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as witnessed the other day.

Neville de Silva is an awardwinning, veteran Sri Lankan journalist currently on a diplomatic assignment.