India & the
Struggle for Tamil Eelam
Sri Lanka is fighting India�s war, says
Air Marshal Ranasinghe
P.K. Balachandran, Hindustan Times, 26 February 2001
The former commander of the Sri Lankan Air Force, Air
Marshal Oliver Ranasinghe, has said the war Sri Lanka is fighting now is not
Sri Lanka's but India's.
In an unsolicited four-page submission to the Sri Lankan
President, Mrs Chandrika Kuma-ratunga, Ranasinghe says: "At present, we are
fighting a war which is not ours but India's. We are fighting it in our
country for India."
Ranasinghe did not say more on the Indian angle, but his
point was that India was cleverly engaging the LTTE outside its shores in
order to prevent the militant group from coming to India. "Like the
Americans, we should have fought the war in somebody's else's country such
as India, UK, Germany or Canada where funds are being generated for the
LTTE," he wrote.
About four years ago, Ranasinghe told an inquiry that tender
procedures had to be circumvented for the purchase of Israeli Kfir aircraft
because other countries were not willing to sell attack aircraft to Sri
Lanka saying India would object.
