UN tried to save Tiger leaders: report

The UN together with a Western government tried to save Sri Lanka’s Tiger leadership from a final offensive that eventually wiped them out, an Indian media report said Tuesday.

A surviving Tiger leader, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, formerly the chief arms smuggler for the rebels, told Indian website FirstPost that the world body was trying to arrange a ship for top figures to flee in May 2009. Sri Lanka claimed an end to 37 years of ethnic bloodshed after killing the military leadership of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the island’s northeast coast in mid May 2009.

Pathmanathan, in the interview conducted earlier this month at an undisclosed location in Colombo, has said that the UN and an unnamed government wanted to send a ship for the trapped Tiger leadership to escape.

Asked to name the country involved, he said: “Actually, it was UN with another country. I don’t like to mention the name of the country, but it’s a Western country.”

Pathmanathan, who is better known as KP, was appointed chief international representative of the Tigers by rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran shortly before he was killed in the last days of the war.

Pathmanathan was taken into custody in August 2009 following a covert operation in an unnamed southeast Asian country. NEW DELHI, Tuesday, AFP