LTTE on recruitment drive for child soldiers: Army

The Tamil Tigers are on a recruitment spree for child soldiers and are specially targeting tsunami relief camps, Sri Lankan army has claimed.

The LTTE are on a recruitment drive, a senior army official said on conditions of anonymity, adding, "the victims of tsunami who are residing in refugee camps are easy target for the rebels, who kidnap the children and train them to pick up arms and fight for the cause of a separate Tamil motherland."

But the number of child recruits has changed recently, according to the Army and NGOs working in the island nation.

"They (LTTE) might hunt for and kidnap youngsters from the refugee camps or elsewhere and make them join their army but eight out of ten children have been running away from the LTTE camps in the recent months," the army official said.

Sarvodaya, one of the island's oldest NGOs working for repatriation of victims of civil war, said the children are gradually distancing themselves from the rebels' ideologies and guarding against becoming soft targets.

"There are fewer cases of child recruits in the LTTE territory in the recent years,' HG Nishantha Preethiraj of Sarvodaya said.

In the past, various agencies, including the island's peace monitors have said that boys and girls as young as 11 or 12 years old have been recruited as fighters with some being abducted from homes forcibly.

The Army official also said there are little chances of the tigers going to war with Sri Lanka as the rebel organisation is cash-strapped and weakened by the recent split in its ranks.

Prabhakaran had threatened in his annual radio speech on November 27 to establish "self governance" in the island if the Government does not come up with a "reasonable" deal with the rebels. The Government, on its part had extended an offer for peace negotiations with the militants.

The LTTE supremo had given the Government time till the end of its three-and-half year old ceasefire period next year to chalk out a deal saying, "this is our urgent and final appeal."

"The military has taken the most brunt of LTTE's attack in the last decade... However now they are short on funds, which is evident from the self-imposed taxes on the villagers living near their territory," the army official claimed.

"We are expecting small individual attacks from the rebels to make good their claims of picking up arms once again" but a full-fledged war was "a near impossible thing" in the context of the island's changed political scenario and the LTTE's present strength, he claimed.

"The cleaving of the Karuna faction dealt a mortal blow to Prabhakaran's strength," he said. The group led by Karuna broke away from the LTTE in March last and is now controlling parts of the eastern coastline.

"They (LTTE) are suspicious of our peace moves," the official claimed and added the government in its fresh proposals is not likely to concede to a separate Tamil state.

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