Dubai: Velupillai Prabhakaran, the chief of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was on Tuesday described as a terrorist by Sri Lanka's Foreign Affairs minister Rohitha Bogollagama.
Bogollogama said that they would welcome Prabhakaran surrender but other than that, they would focus on catching him and bringing him to book.
The minister is here to address 11 heads of Sri Lankan missions in the Middle East in a workshop that will discuss the action plan for 2009 and other challenges that are needed to overcome and strengthen the representation of the island country in the Arab world.
"The Sri Lankan Army has made remarkable inroads into the LTTE areas and during the operation, we had zero causality rates, which is a major achievement for any conventional army," Bogollagama said.
Gaining ground
The Sri Lankan army last week recovered Kilinochchi - an area considered as an LTTE main base - and the Elephant pass. It is now moving forward with plans to limiting the LTTE to a small area in the jungle.
"The LTTE throughout were engaged in guerrilla warfare. The LTTE has never fought us in the open. From Sampore and Thoppigala in the East, they all are fighting out of the jungle.
"With the Elephant pass and Killinoche being successfully taken back... the entire line is now connected to Jaffna by road. This has enhanced the humanitarian process in the country. People are free to move once again out of the clutches of the LTTE.
"The jungle for the LTTE is becoming limited so that they cannot hide any further. We are confident that we can liquidate terrorism from Sri Lanka," Bogollama said.
On whether Sri Lanka would hand over Prabhakaran to India once he is captured, he said: "We cannot handover subjects of Sri Lanka without a country asking for it. First India has to ask for him and then we have to look into legal framework within which we have to treat such a handover.
"There is no extradition treaty between Indian and Sri Lanka. But we are also aware that he is wanted by India for plotting the assassination of the former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
"So there is something [and] India has the right to seek his handover, but having said that he has also been convicted in Sri Lanka. He has to serve 200 years in jail for the Central Bank bombing," Bogollogama said.
He said that with the military's successful engagement in the north, they were confident that the LTTE will no longer be able to destabilise the northern region.
"We are looking at wider engagement in political issues and set agenda for democracy and development to take shape in all parts of Sri Lanka. We are now planning the development activities and restoration of democracy," he said.
Other challenges
Bogollogama said the other challenge faced was the global economic crisis.
"Our import too supports our export drive. In both ways, it is connected with the international market, buying as well as selling. In that context we have taken notice of issues unfolding in the world. We see that 2009 is going to be the difficult time for the world.
"But in Sri Lanka we have been able to be resilient and with that resilient we have brought wider fiscal management in our country. All our banks are well insulated for any sort of need for desperate measures," he said.
He added they were confident that after the conflict, they hoped the economy would receive a major boost from the region as well as from India, which he said was a major factor.
Middle east work force
About 1.2 million Sri Lankans are employed in the Mideast. The break-up is as follows:
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