Himalayan News Service

New Delhi, May 7:

Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger guerrillas may be taking part in the Norway-backed peace process but they remain “one of the deadliest terrorist organisations in the world”, the Indian government has said.

The home ministry’s annual report for 2004-05 says that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE) demand that its naval unit should be treated on a par with the Indian and Sri Lankan navies was a “threat to Indian security”.

“The LTTE continues to be an extremely potent, most lethal and well-organised terrorist force in Sri Lanka and has strong connections in Tamil Nadu and certain pockets of southern India,” the report said in a brief but hard-hitting section on the Tamil Tigers.

“The organisation assiduously cultivates Tamil chauvinist elements who are inspired by the Tamil Eelam concept of a separate Tamil Nadu, i.e., secession from India.

“The LTTE, by carrying out several successful suicide killing missions in Sri Lanka and one in India, has emerged as one of the deadliest terrorist organisations in the world, which has sympthisers, supporters and agents on the Indian soil.”

The report’s reference was to the May 1991 assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally at Sriperumbudur near Chennai, the Tamil Nadu capital. New Delhi outlawed the LTTE in 1992 and has renewed the ban every two years. The ban was last renewed in August 2004.

The home ministry report said: “Notwithstanding the current peace process, the LTTE is yet to give up violence as a means to achieve its goal of establishing a separate homeland for Tamils.

“The LTTE’s insistence on recognition of Sea Tigers as a separate unit by the Sri Lankan government poses yet another threat to Indian security.”

The LTTE, whose leader V Prabhakaran was once based in India but who is now wanted in the country for the Gandhi assassination, controls large areas in Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority north and east.

With Norway’s felicitation, it signed a ceasefire agreement with the Sri Lankan government in 2002. But killings, many blamed on the LTTE, continue. Indian officials have accused the Tigers of promoting a militant group in Tamil Nadu and forging links with Maoist guerrillas and the United Liberation Front of Asom.

Intensified coastal patrolling, collection and collation of intelligence and strengthening of naval detachments in Tamil Nadu have been undertaken,” the report said.