Leftist Tamils Playing Bigger Role, Sri Lanka Aide Says

Sri Lanka’s official in charge of the government campaign against Tamil separatists in that island nation declared Saturday that leftist guerrilla groups now play an increasingly dominant role among anti-government forces.

The biggest change in the past six months of sporadic conflicts between government forces and guerrilla units “is the rise of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization and the decline of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” said Lalith Athulathmudali, national security minister in the Colombo government.

The Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are considered to be the largest of six principal groups fighting for Eelam, or Tamil homeland, in the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka, which was formerly known as Ceylon. The Tamil Eelam organization says it is seeking a Marxist socialist state, while the Liberation Tigers have less obvious political leanings, with most of their support apparently built around the personality of their young rebel leader, V. Prabakaran.

Athulathmudali, here on a visit encouraged by the United States to seek India’s help in solving the separatist conflict, said that he stressed the increasingly leftist orientation of guerrilla groups in recent meetings with American officials, including Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Vice President George Bush.

Athulathmudali said the U.S. leaders advised him to consult with India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Both men are in their early 40s and both are British-educated.

“He (Gandhi) and I are in the same age group,” Athulathmudali said. “We are both of the post-independence struggle generation, while Mrs. Gandhi (Rajiv’s mother, Indira Gandhi) and Junius Jayewardene (Sri Lanka president) were involved in the freedom fight. . . . You might expect us to speak the same language.”

Gandhi and Athulathmudali met for more than an hour Saturday. Afterward, Athulathmudali, officially here as a special envoy for Jayewardene, would not discuss details of the meeting. A spokesman for the Indian prime minister said only that it was “a useful exchange of views on the Sri Lanka situation.”

India, with 49 million Tamils living in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, has a political and cultural interest in the fate of Sri Lanka’s Tamils, numbering 2.6 million in an island population of 15 million. Sri Lanka, meanwhile, has repeatedly asserted that India permits Tamil separatist groups to operate and train freely in Tamil Nadu state, just across a narrow strait from Sri Lanka.

In an interview with several Western reporters Saturday, Athulathmudali asserted that his government is in control of all key Tamil areas on the island.