Gandhi Meets Tamil Rebel Leaders : Guerrilla Chief Is Key to Success or Failure of Peace Pact

NEW DELHI —  Leaders of the most powerful Sri Lankan Tamil rebel group met Saturday with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who is trying to persuade the guerrillas to surrender their arms and end Sri Lanka’s civil war, the Press Trust of India said.

The news agency quoted sources in the rebel delegation as saying the Tamil leaders, including Vellupillai Prabhakaran, head of the 5,000-man Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, met with Gandhi on Saturday and would shortly depart for Jaffna, their stronghold in northern Sri Lanka.

The news agency gave no details of what had been discussed or exactly when the rebels would depart. The report could not be independently confirmed.

The Statesmen newspaper reported that Prabhakaran has been offered position of chief minister of the Northern and Eastern Provinces if he accepts the peace plan. The provinces would be governed by a council and have some autonomy from the Sinhalese-dominated central government.

Prabhakaran, 33, is the key to the success or failure of the peace agreement signed Wednesday in Colombo by Gandhi and Sri Lanka President Junius R. Jayewardene to end the bloody ethnic war on the island nation.

Prabhakaran’s organization was not a party to the agreement, which calls for the estimated 5,000 Tamil guerrillas to surrender their arms by Monday. However, guerrilla spokesman in the Jaffna Peninsula, where more than 3,000 Indian troops are now deployed, say they will not disarm unless Prabhakaran orders it.

Uncompromising Fighter

A short, stocky man of few words, Prabhakaran is known as an uncompromising guerrilla fighter. By his own account, his first victim in the Tamil struggle was the former mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappa, whom he shot to death in 1975. Prabhakaran was 21 years old at the time.

In posters displayed in Jaffna and in Tamil Tiger political offices in India, the Tiger leader is most often shown posing next to tiger skins or large cardboard cut-outs of tigers.

His political beliefs are vague. In interviews, he advocates the creation of a “socialist” Tamil state, “similar to that of Yugoslavia, where people elect a single party.”

But there is no question of his followers’ loyalty: They all proudly carry cyanide pills to swallow in the event they are captured.

The task of persuading him to give up his weapons will be difficult.

“Prabhakaran feels the laying down of arms is the ultimate symbolic act in an arms struggle,” said Neelan Tirachelvam, a moderate Tamil political leader in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.

With Prabhakaran’s help, the peace agreement is an almost certain success. Without his cooperation, the Indian army faces the daunting prospect of trying to recover the weapons in house-to-house searches.

In Sri Lanka, military sources said Saturday that Tamil rebels, refusing to lay down their arms, have set up fortifications on the main road to their Jaffna stronghold to block Indian peacekeeping troops.

The Sri Lankan sources said the fortifications increase the possibility of an armed confrontation if the Indians try to forcibly disarm the insurgents.