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Afghanistan/South Asia
Tigers offer amnesty to renegade commander
2004-03-09
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers offered an amnesty to their expelled renegade commander yesterday and stressed he was alone in his battle to break away from the main guerrilla group.
Bet he feels pretty isolated. It's just him and 6,000 gunnies...
In an interview, S.P. Thamilselvan, said the dispute would not lead to factional fighting. "Our national leader Velupillai Prabhakaran has offered an amnesty to Karuna that will allow him to lead a private life," he said. "There seems no necessity to take military action as Karuna stands only as a single individual." He said the amnesty offer had been conveyed to the renegade commander Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, also known as Karuna, through a delegation led by Roman Catholic bishop, the Rev. Kingsley Swampillai.

Eastern-based Karuna announced last Wednesday that he and 6,000 fighters were breaking away from north-based Prabhakaran's Tamil Tigers in a dispute over troop deployment. The rebels nationwide number 15,000. Two days later Prabhakaran announced that he had expelled Karuna from the group. Muralitharan refused to relinquish power. He said on Sunday that he was the target of an assassination operation.

There was no immediate reaction from Muralitharan to the amnesty offer. Earlier, Karuna ordered his loyalists to intensify checks to prevent his former leader sending cadres to arrest him while pressing his demand for a separate cease-fire agreement with the government. Reports from the eastern province said that loyalists of former eastern military wing leader, 'Colonel' Karuna were checking buses and other private vehicles to detect whether Prabhakaran was sending his men to arrest him and take control of the east. Military officials said that the checks were also being carried out by Karuna's loyalists in government controlled areas, despite a warning that they should not carry out these checks. For the first time in the 20-year war, effigies of Prabhakaran were burnt in areas controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Posted by:Fred

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