Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- A female suicide bomber blew herself up in an attack on a Sri Lankan government minister, after the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam said army operations are destroying any chance of peace.

The bomber, who hid the explosives in her bra, killed one person and injured two others in the office of Douglas Devananda, the minister for social services, the Defense Ministry said. The minister wasn't hurt. Police yesterday arrested a man and woman suspected of plotting to kill Devananda for the LTTE, the government said.

A second bombing happened later in the Colombo suburb of Nugegoda during evening rush hour, the Ministry of Defense said. The blast happened outside a retail store. Television stations showed people being treated for their injuries in hospitals.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government has ``shut fast the door for peace'' by continuing to attack the LTTE, rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran said in his annual address yesterday.

Sri Lanka's army won control of the eastern region in July after 14 years of fighting, leaving the LTTE holding areas in the north. The Tamil Tigers, designated a terrorist group by the U.S., the European Union and India, have been fighting for 24 years for a separate homeland in a conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people.

``The minister's public relations officer succumbed to his injuries'' and two security personnel are hurt, said Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman. The bomber was a polio patient, he added.

``That is the reason why she was let into the building,'' he said. ``It was the day the minister meets the patients. Before she could meet the minister the security personnel stopped her.''

Targeted

It's the fifth time he has been targeted, Nanayakkara said, adding the minister survived an assassination attempt in 2004 when an attacker also packed the bomb inside her bra.

The couple arrested yesterday confessed to plotting to kill Devananda, the government said in a statement. They had been trained at an LTTE camp, it added.

Sri Lanka's air force bombed the LTTE's radio station late yesterday to try to stop it broadcasting Prabhakaran's speech.

The attack destroyed the building near the LTTE headquarters in Kilinochchi, northern Sri Lanka, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. The LTTE said 10 people were killed and the address was broadcast by a support radio, TamilNet reported.

``The Tamil national question cannot be resolved by military oppression,'' Prabhakaran said, according to a transcript.

`Never Be Ready'

Rajapaksa, in his budget speech to Parliament on Nov. 7, vowed to ``eradicate'' terrorism from the South Asian island, saying the Tamil Tigers have ``demonstrated that they will never be ready to surrender arms and agree to a democratic political settlement.''

The Voice of Tigers radio station was ``flattened'' when air force jets dropped 12 bombs on the building on the outskirts of Kilinochchi, the LTTE's Peace Secretariat said in an e-mailed statement late yesterday. ``Civilians traveling on the road were also killed,'' it said.

Three members of the radio's editorial team and seven civilians died, TamilNet cited an unidentified LTTE official as saying.

The military increased operations against Tamil Tiger bases in the north after capturing Eastern Province. S.P. Thamilchelvan, the head of LTTE's political wing, was killed in a Nov. 2 air raid near Kilinochchi.

``We have strategically withdrawn from the east while launching defensive attacks,'' Prabhakaran said, according to an e-mailed statement from the Peace Secretariat. The army is now forced to commit troops ``to rule land without people.''

`Military Path'

Prabhakaran blamed the international community for providing aid to Rajapaksa's government and failing to ``condemn unambiguously the military path of the current regime.''

No political party of the Sinhalese majority is prepared to accept the principle for lasting peace, the Tamil homeland, he said. ``To expect a political solution from any of these southern parties is political naivety.''

Tamils made up 11.9 percent of Sri Lanka's 20 million people in 2001, the Census and Statistics Department said. Sinhalese made up almost 74 percent of the population.

Air force jets attacked two ``high profile'' LTTE command posts, one of them near Kilinochchi, on the eve of Prabhakaran's address, the Defense Ministry said two days ago.

``We are after'' Prabhakaran, Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said in a Nov. 26 interview with Agence France-Presse. ``We are specifically targeting their leadership.''

The LTTE has to be defeated militarily, he said. ``Then a political solution becomes possible.''

Rajapaksa's government rejects any peace proposal that envisages the division of the country while saying it is prepared to devolve some power to the regions.

Fighting between the army and the LTTE intensified last year as two attempts at peace talks in Geneva failed. The LTTE has an estimated 12,000 fighters and 4,000 members of a naval unit known as the Sea Tigers.

To contact the reporters on this story: Anusha Ondaatjie in Colombo at anushao@bloomberg.net; Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 28, 2007 08:28 EST