Lanka says LTTE menace to S Asia

Colombo: The Sri Lanka Government is still investigating how the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) managed to attack an air force base undetected but says the group has now become a threat to the South Asian region.

The rebels claimed to have knocked out 40 percent of the air force's strike capability north of Colombo. The Tigers said more such attacks by its air wing would follow, threatening to deepen renewed conflict in country.

"The air power of a frenzied and desperate organisation as the LTTE is a grave threat aimed not only at Sri Lanka but also at the entire South Asian region," the island's main political parties said in a joint statement issued overnight.

"We call upon the international community to make a proper assessment of this very real danger and draw its serious attention to all actions taken both locally and abroad by these separatist terrorist forces in Sri Lanka."

The government on Monday said India in particular should be wary of the threat posed by the rebels' air wing–made up of up to five light aircraft smuggled onto the island in pieces and reassembled.

The Sri Lankan government has been trying unsuccessfully for years to convince India– which lost around 1,000 troops in the 1990s when a peacekeeping mission turned into all-out war with the Tigers–to become more involved in ending the conflict.

"From the point of view of brutality and lunacy, the LTTE is an easy match for the authors of the September 11 hellfires," the government mouthpiece Daily News wrote in an editorial on Tuesday.

"It goes without saying that those behind Sept. 11 may have taken a leaf from the LTTE," the daily said.

Watch out, says former Indian army chief

India needs monitor the activities of the LTTE and take note of its new air power, former Army chief General V P Malik said in Chandigarh on Tuesday.

"It is a serious development that a group like the LTTE is capable of such a thing, which is obviously much better than what people had thought," Malik said.

Asked how India's military should view this development, he said, "Though I don't see any military threat to us from the LTTE, but we need to be watchful and keep a note of it."

"However, the fact that they have launched the air strike is not a good development for the region as a whole," Malik said.

(With Reuters and PTI)