Tamil Tigers formally declare peace

Press, 6 August 1987, Page 6

Tamil Tigers formally declare peace

NZPA-Reuter Jaffna

Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers guerrillas were expected to hand' their weapons over to Indian troops today to mark the end of a four-year civil war that has cost 6000 lives.

Peace was formally declared by Tamil guerrilla leaders in their northern Jaffna peninsula stronghold yesterday when they said their followers would hand over their arms under a peace agreement brokered by India. The ethnic conflict has damaged Sri Lanka’s tourist trade and bedevilled the island’s economy. But the guerrilla leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, aged 33, chief of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.), warned that only a separate state for Sri Lanka’s two million Tamils could bring a lasting peace. “The mode of our struggle may change but we will be fighting for Tamil Eelam with the

support of Tamil-speaking people,” he said. Prabhakaran, addressing 100,000 of his supporters from a makeshift stage in a field yesterday, did not specify when his guerrillas would hand over their weapons. But his lieutenants said the handover would probably take place today. The guerrilla weapons are due to be handed to the 4000 Indian troops who have arrived in Jaffna to help implement the peace pact signed last week by the Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and the Sri Lankan President, Junius Jayewar dene.

The pact aims to meet Tamil grievances by merging the Northern and Eastern Province, where most of them live, into an autonomous province. Tamils, who have ethnic links with Southern India, make up 13 per cent of Sri Lanka’s 16 million population and the Sinhalese make up 74 per cent.

Some Sinhalese are highly critical of the pact and greeted it with riots in which at least 74 people were killed and more than four billion rupees (SNZ249 million) of property was damaged. “We are going to hand our weapons to the Indian armed forces,” Prabhakaran told his supporters, who cheered and applauded while Tigers sharpshooters stood watch on nearby rooftops.

He said he was not consulted on the peace pact and disagreed with some aspects of it but was forced to accept it because of Indian pressure. “India promised to safeguard the security of the Tamil-speaking people. We had no choice — we had to toe the line of the Indian Government,” he said.

Diplomats said Prabhakaran had had to accept the peace pact or lose Indian support and rear base facilities in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.