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Uproar in India over Prabha's presser
By Iqbal Athas in Chennai
India's southern Tamil Nadu leaders expressed revulsion at LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran's news conference on Wednesday, but New Delhi reacted cautiously saying there was no change in its position vis-a-vis the group banned in this country as a terrorist organisation.

Newly re-elected Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha Jayaram slammed the Sri Lankan government for what she called was its "outrageous" decision to permit a terrorist leader wanted by her country to move freely and hold a news conference. In a letter she has written to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Chief Minister has said that the Indian Army should be sent to arrest the LTTE leader and bring him to justice in India.

She has referred to the existence of an extradition treaty between India and Sri Lanka and said it was the duty of the Colombo government to have Mr. Prabhakaran arrested. In New Delhi, the premier who returned from an official visit to Southeast Asia said in a statement that there was no change in India's policy towards the LTTE, and that it would remain a banned terrorist organisation.

Premier Vajpayee was also quoted here as saying that there was only one proposal before the government and that was for allowing LTTE's chief spokesman Anton Balasingham to come to India for treatment. This, he said would receive 'sympathetic consideration'.

The statements did not seem to underscore any softening of India's current 'hands-off' line in Sri Lanka's northern insurgency despite a fervent plea from the LTTE leader and Mr. Balasingham last Wednesday for Indian support for the organisation. The LTTE spokesman pleaded with Indian journalists at the news conference not to "dig the past". "We have changed our strategies. Please understand," he said when repeatedly asked to explain LTTE's assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the deaths of nearly a thousand Indian soldiers with the IPKF.

He called India "Our Fatherland" in a clear signal to appease India, but also drew a distinction between "official India" and "the people of India". Dr. Balasingham at the news conference said he had made an appeal to India to allow him to use India to receive medical treatment if the need arises as he is a kidney transplant patient.
Angry parliamentarians from the Congress Party led by Gandhi's widow Sonia, slammed the LTTE in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) and called for the extradition of the LTTE leader who has been found guilty in the Rajiv Gandhi murder case here.

Tamil Nadu's one-time Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi showed bi-partisan opposition to the LTTE in the southern state which once harboured the entire LTTE leadership at a time of a Sri Lankan Army crackdown in the Jaffna peninsula around 1979-84. He told journalists dismissively "you saw the press conference. I saw it. What is there to say?".

But it was incumbent Chief Minister Jayalalitha Jayaram who was the severest on the LTTE High Command. In a related development Congress Leader in Tamil Nadu Vazhapadi K. Ramamurthy wanted the Indian Central government to make a strongly worded demand to the Sri Lankan government to arrest and extradite LTTE leader Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman.

Mr. Ramamurthy told reporters in Chennai that he would observe a token fast near a Rajiv Gandhi Statue at Chennai on April 22 to press for the demand. He said he wondered how the Sri Lankan government had allowed Mr. Prabhakaran to hold a news conference inviting hundreds of international journalists.

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