Pro-LTTE elements predict imminent fall of elephant pass and Mullaittivu

(By: Walter Jayawardhana)

Pro-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) websites and their proxy politicians have openly expressed fears that they would lose Elephant Pass immediately and their main seaport Mullaittivu and other places of control eventually.

Shivaji Lingam, member of the 22 parliamentarians strong Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the proxy party of the LTTE, from Chennai said, “And even if the LTTE were to lose Mullaittivu also, then too they will continue their struggle.”

The pro- Tamil website, Cyber News said, “The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have begun withdrawing from entrenched positions in the strategic Elephant Pass region. The narrow Isthmus that links the Jaffna peninsula to the Northern mainland known as Wanni by land is often described as the “gateway to Jaffna”.

Preparations are also afoot to vacate tiger positions in other key places in Eastern Wanni like Mullaittivu, Oddusuddan ,Muhamalai, Kilaly and Vatraappalai.

Apparently soldiers are now about 2 km to the south of Elephant Pass and are near Kurinchatheevu adjacent to Elephant Pass. Realising that Elephant Pass is not defendable the LTTE have begun vacating the area, the sources say.

Battlefield reports say that the Sri Lanka Army soldiers are about two kilometers South of Elephant Pass. According to LTTE sources realizing the Elephant Pass is no longer defensible the terrorists are slowly vacating the place. It is not clear whether they would put up some resistance or simply vacate the area, the sources said.

The terrorists escaping from Elephant Pass, Mullaittivu, Oddusudan and Vatraappalai are expected to hide in heavily entrenched fortified bunkers in the jungles of Mullaittivu poised for hit and run terrorist attacks both against the civilians and the government security forces.

Addressing the nation Army Commander Sarath Fonseka said after the fall of Kilinochchi, “We are confident that we can see the end of them withing this year. We don’t need even a year to see their end.” He said the area the LTTE leadership and cadres are hiding is like the terrain of Thoppigala in the Eastern Province, which the security forces overran.

Analysts have said there is an estimated number of 1700 to 1900 LTTE cadres remaining alive to do whatever kind of warfare they adopt.

Even if they adopt hit and run attacks on the civilians and security personnel in the future it would be nothing very much different from what they practiced together with conventional warfare. The United national Party has accused the government of pushing them to what they call guerilla warfare. But other sources say the government did not push them to anything but to their eventual demise.

Courtesy: Ministry of Defence

India dashes hopes of TN LTTE proxies: Prabhakaran to be trailed for Rajiv assassination

(By: Walter Jayawardhana)

Dashing all hopes of Tamil Nadu politicians that eventually some kind of intervention could be obtained from New Delhi to save the LTTE terrorists, India’s ruling Congress demanded the extradition of Velupillai Prabhakaran if he is nabbed by the Sri Lankan forces to be tried for the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

Calling Prabhakaran a murderer of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi the Congress Party spokesman Veerappa Moily said, “He is an assassin and we would be very happy if he was extradited to India. We want him to be prosecuted and convicted here for the grave crime he committed.”

Together with his intelligence Chief Pottu Amman, Prabhakaran is accused of murdering Gandhi using a LTTE woman suicide bomber at Siriperumbudur near Chennai.

Publishing Moily’s statement, the Times of India said, it “signals a strong stand ruling out any intervention under pressure from DMK.”

A coalition ally of the Congress Party, the DMK has been requesting New Delhi to impose a Ceasefire on the Sri Lankan government.

Congress spokesman Veerappa Moily very clearly told reporters in New Delhi, that the LTTE is a banned outfit in India and Prabhakaran is wanted in India for the assassination of the late Rajiv Gandhi.

Moily also clearly separated the issue of how LTTE terrorists are treated by the Sri Lanka government as terrorists from the issue of protecting the rights of minority Tamils in the island nation. The Congress is not mixing up the issue of terrorism with the issue of protecting the rights of the Tamils, Moily said.

Courtesy: Ministry of Defence

Army , Air Force Chiefs dismiss allegations level against security forces by unpatriotic politicians

(By Walter Jayawardhana)

Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka, Sri Lanka’s Army Commander and Air Force Commander Air Vice Marshall Roshan Goonetilleke have totally rejected the statements made by United National Party leader Ranil Wickramasinghe that quick and complete attention have not been provided to soldiers who are injured at the war front to save their lives.

Fonseka said in a statement broadcast by the state owned Independent Television Network (ITN), ” The security forces have enough helicopters to transport all injured soldiers immediately from the battlefield to necessary hospitals and after immediate treatment, if necessary there are enough transport planes to transfer them to Colombo for further specialized medical attention.” In a sweeping statement he rejected the UNP leaders utterances as “untruth” and “distortions” meant to mislead.

This is the first time the country’s Opposition Leader had to be contradicted in a statement so strong as this by the country’s armed forces. Fonseka said, most of the soldiers hit in the battlefield are by the heavy artillery and mortars possessed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) “that were allowed to be smuggled into the country by politicians during the days of the Ceasefire Agreement and the very leaders who allowed those weapons into the country should be directly responsible for the injuries caused to the soldiers,” in an obvious atttack on Wickremasinghe. Many shiploads of weapons were allowed to be taken into the country during the time of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe while the country’s Navy was asked to show a Nelsonian eye to the activities of the LTTE as a measure to save the Ceasfire Agreement, years ago.

Both Lieutenant General Fonseka , the Army Commander and Air Force Commander Air Vice Marshall Roshan Goonetilleke in televised statements said the Opposition Leader’s statement as “complete distortion of the truth” and ” a lie” probably concocted to sabotage the recruitment to the security forces all over the nation “by misleading the masses.”

Fonseka and Goonetilleke said, injured soldiers are directly transported to Palali, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa ,Mannar , Ampara hospitals etc directly from the battlefields by helicopters and from those places to Colombo if further treatment is wanted. Fonseka said there are enough transport planes coming to Colombo to transfer such soldiers.

Ranil Wickremasinghe’s closest political ally Mangala Samaraweera had earlier said the present commander of the armed forces does not know warfare and that’s why so many have died. Samaraweera was quoted having said that ” lives of soldiers are being sacrificed because the defence secretary and army commander do not have an understanding or strategy to conduct the war.” In an obvious reference to Samaraweera , the Army Commander said, it is ridiculous that people who oppose warring with the Tamil Tigers are now trying to instruct them about war strategy.

He said the strategy of the government is definitely based on years of past experience and the successful results are now showing by our valiant soldiers and their officers by using it. They are now poised to strike Kilinochchi and Mulativu. He said, ” if we took time off for the monsoon and floods we would have given an advantage over us to the LTTE. But our brave soldiers fought regardless and today we are at an advantage over them.” The Army Commander said our forces have successfully run over Iranamadu cross roads and Paranthan leading to their military targets.

Courtesy: Ministry of Defence

‘Karunanidhi’s gobbledygook’- Island Editorial

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi seems to possess several tongues. Having praised and backed the LTTE all these years, now he pretends to be one of the bitterest critics of the outfit.

In an interview with the Indian press, Karunanidhi has sought to dissociate himself from the LTTE and promised stern action against those who are espousing its macabre cause.

One must not make the mistake of falling for sinker. All roads, they say, lead to Rome Karunanidhi’s pro-LTTE stand has not changed at all. Only his modus operandi of supporting Prabhakaran has. He can no longer support the LTTE openly because of the Mumabi disaster, which stood India’s policy towards terrorism on its head. India has realised the danger of using terrorism as a tool of further its geo-political interests.

And it has vowed to eliminate terrorism in all its forms and manifestations Karunanidhi was therefore become a huge embarrassment to the Indian government by supporting the LTTE, which is responsible for having committed the worst acts of terrorism against India such as killing Rajiv Gandhi and about 1,400 Indian soldiers and maiming over 3,000 others. India has not lost so many troops even in any of its wars with neighbouring states. Since Independence.

Worse, it has suffered this kind of damage and humiliation at the hands of a terrorist group which it created to satisfy its hegemonic interests at the expense of Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity.

The congress-led government has made a mockery of its much advertised was on terror by having as a coalition parties Karunanidhi notorious for his open advocacy of the speratist terrorism of the LTTE banned in India as well as in many other countries.

Karunanidhi is aware that he can no longer expect the Central Government to act according to his whims and fancies without compromising its credibility both locally and internationally and running political risks. Congress activities, it may be recalled, took to the streets recently condemning the Indian politicians supportive of the LTTE.

Karunandihi may be long in the tooth and showing sign of senile decay. But, he knows more than one way to skin a cat. He is all out to sabotage Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE on the pretext of championing the rights of the Vanni civilians Prabhakaran uses those hapless people as a human shield and Karunanidhi is using them as a bludgeon to beat the Sri Lankan government.

It is the LTTE that is keeping the Vanni civilians in the conflict zone at gunpoint exposing them to danger in a bid to ratchet up collateral damage and bring international pressure on Sri Lanka to stop war. The LTTE has no way of escape and is desperate for a truce.

If Karunanidhi is genuinely desirous of helping the civilians in the war zone, he must seek the central government’s help to secure their release from the clutches of the LTTE. He can also mobilise the LTTE backers in Tamil Nadu to pressure the LTTE to let go of the people it is holding against their will and using as cannon fodder.

However, Karunanidhi’s dissociation from the LTTE, feigned as it may be, is a sure sign that the outfit is on it’s look legs. Although he remains an LTTE supporter to the core, backing its greater Eelam project - for 80 million stateless people scattered in many parts of the world - he is wary of ruining his political future by throwing in his lot with a failed terrorist outfit, which has expended tens of thousands of precious lives and billions of rupees for twenty five years in vain. This is certainly bad news for all those, both here and abroad, who have mistakenly pinned their hopes on the LTTE.

Meanwhile, Karunanidhi may try every trick in the book, but he cannot pull the wool over the eyes of the discerning. Courtesy: The Island

Courtesy: Ministry of Defence

Tamils not loyal to LTTE -President

As the battle for Kilinochchi enters a decisive phase, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has urged politicians concerned over the safety of Tamil civilians to “coax the LTTE to allow the civilians to move towards the safe corridor”.

In an interview to the New Indian Express, he said that the LTTE “is preventing civilians from moving to safer areas.”

Terming the expected fall of Kilinochchi in the near future not as a “military victory” but as the “beginning of the restorations of democratic freedoms”, the President dismissed the need to wean away people from the LTTE.

“There is error in thinking that there is need to wean the people away from the LTTE. There is nothing to show that they are fully committed to the LTTE or nurtured by it,” President Rajapaksa said. He was willing to concede though a “small misled minority… may be still with it.” He said: “We know that the Tamil people left in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu are held there in the thrall of LTTE’s arms.”

Once that power is broken, he said, the Tamil people will be free to join the democratic system. “We will be looking towards a new Spring of Development in and for the North” he said.

The President said his country took a “serious note” of the fact that an average of 500 Indian fishing vessels enter Sri Lankan waters daily.

Declaring that “the movement of smugglers” was a threat to the country’s “sovereignty and security”, the President pointed to a “nexus between smugglers and the LTTE and perhaps even other terrorist organisations.”

On whether the arrangement with Member of Parliament V. Muralitheran and Eastern Provincial Council Chief Minister S. Chandrakanthan (both defected from the LTTE) is working out, the President said differences of opinion were common in democracy and that he hoped the two “would sort out differences in the larger interests of the people they represent.”

Courtesy : Daily News