Prabhakaran to blame for LTTE’s demise, says Karuna

COLOMBO - Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was “solely responsible” for the crushing defeat of his group, a former aide who is now a Sri Lankan minister has said.

Vinayamurthy Muralitharan alias Karuna said Prabhakaran was to blame for the Tigers’ debacle because he did not heed anybody’s advice and acted on his own accord, the media reported Tuesday.

Karuna, the deputy minister of resettlement, was addressing the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, which is looking into the incidents during the ethnic conflict.

Because of Prabhakaran’s conduct, thousands of people had to die, The Island newspaper quoted him as saying.

“Many in the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) were unhappy with Prabhakaran and he … didn’t heed the advice given by others,” said Karuna, whose 2004 revolt stunned the Tigers.

Until then, he was the regional commander in the LTTE in charge of the country’s eastern province. He also took part in peace talks between the LTTE and the government.

“Prabhakaran discriminated against the eastern (province) cadres,” he said.

Karuna said the LTTE, which was crushed by the Sri Lankan military in May 2009, could never be revived.

The former LTTE cadres would never want to join “a terrorist outfit of the nature of the Tigers as they had suffered enough and more”, he said.

People in Sri Lanka’s north desired peace and would not want another war as they had gone through untold suffering, he added.

Karuna, as he is popularly known, said the late LTTE spokesman Anton Balasingham, a British national, was a cunning man but a “good diplomat”.

He added that Norway, which brokered a ceasefire between Colombo and the LTTE in 2002, gave money to the Tigers during the peace talks and this was used to purchase weapons.