Lanka didn’t get UK aid to fight terrorists operating from India

LANKA HAD REQUESTED UK, US, JAPAN TO LEND NAVAL PATROL VESSELS FOR USE AGAINST TAMIL TERRORISTS OPERATING FROM INDIA: ARCHIVES

NEW DELHI: The United Kingdom refused to help Sri Lanka by giving naval patrol boats to check ‘Tamil terrorists operating from bases in India’, documents from the UK cabinet proceedings recently declassified by the UK National Archives dating back to 1984 reveal.

“The Sri Lankans had, however, requested of the UK, the US and Japan, the loan of naval patrol vessels for use against Tamil terrorists operating from India,” the papers marked ‘Confidential’ say.

“But it would in any case, be politically inadvisable for the UK to meet the Sri Lankan request,” the documents reveal sourcing the information to the UK foreign and commonwealth secretary who termed the situation in Sri Lanka as ‘bad’.

The papers also document that there was a good deal of resentment in Sri Lanka over the Indian government’s inactivity with regard to “terrorist” bases in Tamil Nadu.

The 30-year-old papers also said that “Tamil terrorists” had recently mounted a more effective and stronger campaign against the Sri Lankan Government, operating in part from bases in south India.

Seven years later, ex-PM of India Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated in a suicide bombing in Sriperumbudur, in Tamil Nadu. The attack was blamed on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist Tamil organization from Sri Lanka which has since been defeated by the Lankan forces. India had then just extricated itself from the Sri Lankan civil war.

The latest set of declassified papers have already created a furore among Sikhs in UK who have reacted angrily after revelations that British special forces SAS advised India on flushing out Sikh militants from the Golden Temple before Operation Bluestar in 1984.