India 'ready' to mediate in Lanka
The Indian government has expressed its willingness to organise talks between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE provided certain condition are met.
India's Internal Affairs minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the LTTE should first lay down arms and state their willingness for talks. Addressing a public rally in Mylapur, Tamil Nadu, he said Sri Lanka government should also stop all military operations. The senior Indian minister strongly criticised the activities of LTTE during the past decades. 'LTTE blunders' Minister Chidambaram said the LTTE wanted to create a dictatorship in Sri Lanka eliminating the moderate Tamil leadership. "Tamil leaders were killed one by one. Tamil ethnic leadership was destroyed by the Tamil Tigers because they wanted to make Prabhakaran as the only leader and LTTE as the only movement for Tamils," the minister said. Assassination of many Tamil leaders was the "biggest blunder" by LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and it is "still haunting" him, according to the minister. The powerful minister, who is an ethnic Tamil, also heavily criticised the Tamil Tigers for assassinating former Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi. "Their killing of a young leader who was about to be elected back to power in India is their biggest sin of all, which is repeatedly haunting them again and again," he said. Minister Chidambaram said because of these "blunders by the LTTE leader," Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict is yet to be resolved.