In post-independence Sri Lanka:

CFA: Greatest betrayal

Wijitha Nakkawita

*If confidentiality breached KP would not have been arrested

*Over 3,000 CFA violations

*LTTE international business operations complex

The greatest betrayal of the country during the past 60 years was the UNP signing the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) with the LTTE terrorists equating the terrorists force to the legally constituted Armed Forces when the officers of the Armed Forces were asked to shake hands with terrorists and discuss peace, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said at an interview with the Sri Lanka Rupavahini telecast on Saturday night.

While there were 3,000 odd violations of the CFA all that the Armed Forces could do was to look the other way, the Defence Secretary said.

Today UNP and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was asking the Government to tell the public what assets were impounded after the arrest and detention of the international LTTE network leader K.P., but his arrest and deportation had to be carried out under confidentiality that the foreign governments that assisted Sri Lanka in apprehending him had insisted on.

The UNP had a history of betraying the Armed Forces and it was on the request of the terrorist group that the long range deployment force was betrayed, he added.

He said if confidentiality was breached by the government, the arrest of K.P would not have been possible as a few weeks prior to it Channel 4 station had named him the successor to LTTE leader Prabhakaran.

Therefore our intelligence personnel were handling the case under cover and he is still being questioned.

The LTTE international business operations are very complex and some of these are legal businesses in other countries and the government had succeeded in neutralizing some of the LTTE cells abroad but it is difficult to do so in other countries especially in the West but very soon it would become possible to give details about the assets of the LTTE abroad, he noted.