Envoy 'wanted Tamil rebel chief killed'

New Delhi: A former officer of the Indian army, who had headed the peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka, has claimed that the then Indian High Commissioner to Colombo, J.N. Dixit, had asked him in 1987 to eliminate Tamil rebel Chief V. Prabhakaran when he came for a flag meeting with the force.

Harkirat Singh, a retired major general, claimed he, however, refused to carry out the order on the ground that he could not do such an act during a flag meeting.

He said Dixit had called him over the phone on September 15, 1987, and had asked him to kill Prabhakaran during the meeting the Army and the rebels were having.

"I received a call from the High Commissioner that 'tomorrow you are meeting Prabhakaran and we would like you to eliminate him'," Singh said.

"We are an orthodox army and we do not indulge in shooting at the back," Singh said when asked why he refused to carry out the orders of the government.

He said he had informed Overall Forces Commander Lt General Deepinder Singh about the call he received from Dixit and he claimed that his senior stood by his reasoning not to carry out the killing.

Singh then returned the call to Dixit to inform him of the army stand.

Asked whether Prabhakaran knew about the plot, the veteran soldier said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo might have come to know about it later.

"I don't know whether he knew it. He may have got to know about it later," said Singh, who recounts this incident in his book Intervention in Sri Lanka.