Tigers apologise to India

New Delhi: A Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebel leader has apologised for the 1991 assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, the local NDTV television reported here yesterday.

"I would say it is a great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy for which we deeply regret and we call upon the government of India and people of India to be magnanimous, to put the past behind [them] ...," Anton Balasingham, chief negotiator of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, told NDTV in an interview aired late yesterday.

The rebels yesterday urged India to put aside years of distrust and once again try to bring peace to the island.

"The only role which India can play is diplomatically and politically persuading the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE to seek a negotiated settlement rather than involving in a military confrontation," chief rebel negotiator Anton Balasingham told India's NDTV channel in an interview.

He said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were not seeking military intervention by India.

Violence has soared on the Indian Ocean island nation, where a wave of attacks have killed around 700 people this year, straining a 2002 ceasefire between the military and the LTTE and raising fears of a return to civil war.

Gandhi was blown up by a suspected rebel suicide bomber in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

The Tigers have never admitted involvement in the attack but Balasingham urged New Delhi to put the assassination behind it.

India has supported efforts to end the civil war, which killed 64,000 people over two decades until the 2002 truce.

India sent peacekeeping troops to Sri Lanka's Tamil-held areas before becoming locked in open war with the rebels and was forced to pull out.

More than 1,000 Indian soldiers were killed during that effort. India declared the LTTE a terrorist outfit after Gandhi's murder.

Balasingham said the LTTE had pledged to the Indian government that the rebels would under no circumstance act against New Delhi's interests.

"What we feel is India should actively involve in the peace process. We are prepared to build up a new relationship with India provided she makes a positive gesture."

FIGHTING
Four Tigers killed in attack by rivals

Four Tamil Tiger fighters were killed in an attack by a rival group of ex-rebels in Sri Lanka early yesterday and a soldier was shot dead overnight, officials said, amid growing fears of renewed civil war.

The attack in an area controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the east came a day after a suspected Tiger suicide bomber assassinated the army deputy chief of staff.

A wave of attacks on the island has now killed around 700 people so far this year, straining a 2002 ceasefire between the military and the Tigers.