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COLOMBO, Tuesday (AFP) The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have slowly begun demobilising "baby brigades" amid international pressure, but the former child soldiers lack the support they need to return to school, the Scandinavian force monitoring Sri Lanka's truce says. Major General Trond Furuhovde, a Norwegian who heads the team monitoring the ceasefire in place since February, said the rebels were allowing underage combatants to return home, but more needed to be done.

"When they (child soldiers) are taken out of the jungle they must have something just as good or even better," Furuhovde told the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Sri Lanka at a dinner meeting here Monday. He said poverty had forced some children to join the rebels while the demobilisation was now posing challenges to humanitarian agencies in an area where there were hardly any facilities to rehabilitate the soldiers.

"The LTTE needs support in the way they are adjusting to a changing situation. It is important they get support," Furuhovde said, adding that he believed the LTTE was serious about freeing child soldiers in its ranks.

He said sending the child soldiers home was not sufficient and they needed support to integrate in society and go back to school.

There had been a flood of complaints of conscription of child soldiers by the LTTE following reports that the guerrillas were preparing to free a large number of underage combatants, he said.

"Some of the complaints we have received go back to incidents over a year," he said. "With the message out that the LTTE is releasing children, some parents feel that if they lodge a complaint now, they will see their children again." Furuhovde said it was important to understand the circumstances that led to the recruitment of child soldiers and the situation was not a mere "black and white" issue.

The Tigers have been under intense international pressure to give up the deployment of child soldiers.

In June, the United Nations agency for the welfare of children, UNICEF, said more than 60 children recruited as soldiers by Tiger rebels were demobilised following its intervention.

The children were released over a year after UNICEF acted on complaints that the guerrillas were taking children away to become combatants.

However, the LTTE has unofficially admitted freeing "hundreds" of children. Officially, they maintain that underage cadres had joined voluntarily and were deployed for administrative and logistical duties.

The LTTE has been accused of deploying a baby brigade despite earlier assurances to UNICEF's Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict Olara Otunnu in 1998 that children under 18 will not be used as combatants.

UNICEF officials met with the LTTE members in Wanni recently "to explore further opportunities to protect the rights of children affected by the armed conflict," the agency said

Last year, UNICEF's executive director Carol Bellamy accused the Tigers of breaking a pledge and continuing to recruit children, some as young as 10, to fill their ranks.

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