Colombo, Sep 25 : After a long gap, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger guerrillas have publicly criticised India.
A senior leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) accused New Delhi of following the same policy that led to the deployment of Indian troops in Sri Lanka’s northeast in 1987.
"India has been adopting the same policy it adopted with the induction of its army to the northeast in the pretext of providing security to Tamil people," the pro-rebel TamilNet website quoted LTTE’s Elilan as saying. Elilan, head of LTTE’s political wing in the eastern district of Trincomalee, also threatened that the Tamil Tigers were ready for war.
"We hate war and we are committed to the current peace process," he was quoted as saying Friday at the Trincomalee Hindu Cultural Hall. "However, we are militarily strong to face a war if it is thrust on us," he said.
This is the first time since the change of government in New Delhi in May that any LTTE leader has publicly flayed India although LTTE frontal organisations have attacked New Delhi for giving military support to Colombo.
The event at which Elilan spoke was meant to commemorate the death by hunger strike of an LTTE leader, Thileepan, in Jaffna in September 1987, shortly after Indian troops landed in Sri Lanka under a bilateral peace pact.
The troops, however, ended up fighting the LTTE before leaving for home in March 1990. The LTTE is now outlawed in India. (IANS)
