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Chandrika's delayed departure fuels speculation

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's delayed departure from New Delhi has triggered speculation that she stayed back to meet Indian politicians who are close to separatist Tamil leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and could get him to speak to Colombo.

Kumaratunga was to leave for home on Tuesday afternoon, but stayed back for a day, ostensibly to meet senior central ministers and other VVIPs. She left for Colombo yesterday.

Union home ministry officials hinted that she delayed her departure to meet politicians like V Gopalasamy alias Vaiko of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government in New Delhi.

Vaiko is one of the few Indian politicians who are believed to have direct access to the shadowy chief of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Prabhakaran's parents even attended the wedding of Vaiko's son in Madras recently.

Some other politicians are also believed to be close to the separatist Sri Lankan leader and Kumaratunga may have requested senior politicians in the Indian government to facilitate meetings with them.

But the external affairs ministry denied all knowledge of such meetings. Asked if there was any truth in the speculation, a senior official at the ministry's Sri Lanka desk said: "Not to my knowledge."

He also claimed ignorance about what transpired at Tuesday's meeting between Kumaratunga and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. But talk in the All-India Congress Committee office today was that Gandhi had not discussed the extradition of Prabhakaran who is one of the prime accused in her husband and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991.

Asked to comment on reports that the Indo-Sri Lankan free trade agreement might also benefit the LTTE, which could set up fronts to bring arms into the country, the official said it was unlikely.

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