12.7.2008
www.chinaview.cn
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels are seeking the support
of neighboring South Indian state of Tamil Nadu for survival
in the face of the present military onslaught, the state
radio announced here Saturday.
Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation said in its morning
news bulletin that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) now hit by military campaign in the north is engaged
in an attempt to drag Tamil Nadu to intervene on their
behalf in order to see an end to military operations.
Tamil Nadu is home to some 65 million Tamils with close
connections to the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan government in the formative years of the
LTTE's armed campaign in the early 1980s slammed India
for harboring LTTE members and providing them training
in Tamil Nadu.
The LTTE even now has its fair share of political support
in Tamil Nadu. Some of their supporters there have called
for direct intervention in Sri Lanka to stop the military
campaign.
India sent its peace keeping force to the island in 1987
as part of an Indo-Lanka pact to solve the ethnic strife
in Sri Lanka.
The Indian troops soon found that the LTTE was attacking
them. Thousands of Indian soldiers were killed and injured
before they were ordered to quit the island in 1990 by
the then Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa.
Sri Lanka claims that the LTTE is now confined to just
two districts in the Northern Province and the current
military campaign would have an early end completely crushing
the LTTE.
The LTTE has been fighting over three decades to carve
out a separate homeland for the minority Tamils in the
north and east, resulting in the killing of more than
70,000 people in the island.
Editor: Wang Hongjiang
Courtesy - xinhuanet