LTTE ‘finished’, says Minister Muralitharan

V. Muralitharan

* Vinayagamoorthy Mur-alitharan was the President of the TMVP (Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal).

* On March 9, 2009, Muralitharan was named Minister of National Integration and had joined the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

* Born in Kiran in the Batticaloa district.

* He joined the LTTE in 1983 and became a top commander in the district he represented.

* He was once even a bodyguard to LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

In an interview with the UK’s ‘The Guardian’ former LTTE military commander, Minister Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman says the LTTE is “finished”, having lost more than 90% of its fighters.

Speaking to its Colombo correspondent, Muralitharan said around 1,500 surviving rebels, who have made their last stand on a sliver of the north-east coast, are surrounded by 65,000 troops of the Sri Lankan Army, with no way out.

At the height of their powers the Tigers could muster more than 15,000 men at arms.

“It is a do or die battle for the LTTE,” the paper quoted Muralitharan. “The battle is now street to street and door to door.”

Muralitharan commanded the the LTTE’s Eastern military wing until 2004. The paper said many saw his defection as a turning point for the LTTE. ‘Not only was Karuna privy to all the Tigers’ best-kept secrets, he also brought with him 6,000 battle hardened fighters.’

Prabhakaran, he said, had made a series of tactical blunders in the war culminating in the suicide gamble of holding territory. “After he lost Kilinochchi he knew he could not make a stand. But he thought the Tigers could survive among the people. Now the LTTE has trapped 100,000 people and (Prabhakaran) has gone to the jungles (preparing for) a guerrilla war.”

Muralitharan says he has warned the country’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa “this is a critical situation. They have listened. The army do not use sea or air power. I have told them be careful.”

The LTTE’s former military supremo says one of the reasons why the Sri Lankan Army has been so successful is the new commando units that tracked the Tigers’ through their phone calls - pinpointing their jungle lairs. “The LTTE can never be built up again. They can’t use any communications. They are finished.”

He admits a high regard for the Army Commander, Lt. Gen. Sarath Foneska, who survived a Tiger suicide bombing in 2006. Muralitharan says he almost killed him on the battlefield. “We bombed him once during an operation, but he escaped. Lost a colonel and a few others though.

Now we meet frequently and talk about our past. He was a war hero. So was I. We appreciate each other.”

Karuna was made Sri Lanka’s Minister for National Integration recently - a remarkable transition for a man who as a teenager joined the Tigers’ armed struggle in 1983, enraged by the killings of Tamils in Colombo and beguiled by the Tigers’ “big propaganda”.

“We thought we could save our people... but that I know now was not the way,” he said.

Karuna said he fell out with Prabhakaran who called him a “traitor to his race” for signing an agreement with the Sri Lankan government during peace talks in Oslo in 2003.