The LTTE’s elusive and self-proclaimed International Relations Chief Selvaraja Padmanathan alias KP has squarely blamed India for the humiliating defeat of the Tamil Tigers in the hands of the Sri Lankan security forces in the jungles of Vanni last month.

“In the recent war, India sided with Sri Lanka firmly and provided full support to them,” he claimed in a statement emailed to, and broadcast by, an Indian television channel “Headlines Today” and published in “Mail Today” on Friday.

Padmanathan, the most wanted man in Sri Lanka today, said: “Our organization and the Tamil people have become victims of this Indian position.”

“Even though we are fully aware how India has contributed for the military victory of Sri Lanka, we do not hate India,” he claimed.

He went on: “We consider Tamil people would be the true and reliable friends of India in its geo-political struggle with other countries, especially with China.

“We firmly believe India would realize this one day and support Eelam Tamils’ struggle for self-determination.”

Padmanathan said he will initiate “direct contact” with the Indian government and seek its support for Eelam Tamils’ political aspirations.

He also appealed to India to lift the ban it imposed on the LTTE.

(India was the first country in the world to ban the LTTE on 14 May 1992, but only after it was established by a special investigation team that the separatist Sri Lankan Tamil rebel outfit had masterminded and executed the brutal assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally at Sriperumbudur outside Chennai in Tamil Nadu on the night of 21 May 1991).

Padmanathan said the LTTE will now transform itself into a non-violent political organization, and claimed that a framework has been built to set up “a government in exile.”

LTTE’s Legal Adviser Rudrakumar Vishwanathan has been made head of a committee set up to work out the modalities for “a provisional transnational government of Tamil Eelam,” Padmanathan said.

He claimed that the decision to silence “our guns was taken by our leader” Velupillai Prabhakaran before he died “fighting on May 17.”

“We are now moving forward towards a new path…The LTTE has now chosen to take the political path. I would leave the question of another armed struggle to procure the rights of Tamil people for the pages of history,” the bombastic Padmanathan proclaimed.

-The Island-