OWN CORRESPONDENT, Colombo | Wednesday 9.15am.
SRI Lanka’s Tamil Tiger guerrillas are planning to send a top leader to South Africa to seek Pretoria’s help in ending the island’s separatist war, a press report in the capital Colombo said on Wednesday.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) plann to send the group’s ideologue, Anton Balasingam, to South Africa for talks with President Thabo Mbeki and former president Nelson Mandela, the Island newspaper reports. It quoted unnamed Tiger sources as saying the guerrillas are keen that South Africa be a “third-party facilitator” if and when talks open with the Sri Lankan government.
In November, three South African diplomats told reporters in Colombo that Mandela has been asked to mediate a settlement to the Sri Lankan conflict, which has claimed more than 55000 lives. The diplomats, based in New Delhi, said Mandela had been invited by “certain quarters” to get engaged in the Sri Lankan conflict, but made it clear there had been no official request. They said a mediatory role by Mandela must have the backing of all parties to the conflict, as well as the support of countries in the region.
However, in January Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar said Colombo had no intention to engage the South African leader as a “facilitator”. Sri Lanka has also been trying to block an apparent bid by the LTTE to shift its international secretariat from London to a South African city because of new anti-terrorism laws in Britain.
The US government in October 1997 designated the LTTE a “foreign terrorist organisation”, making it illegal for the guerrillas to raise money there. –AFP
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