LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham regretted Rajiv Gandhi assassination

When it was at its height of terrorism, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam would kill, maim and terrorise anyone, including perceived threat from foreign leaders. As the stranglehold of the Sri Lankan Army paid it back in the same coin, the LTTE had eventually buckled in. The number of Tamil fighters of other denominations that the LTTE killed, just because they did not heed its chief, Velupillai Pirbakaran, would put even the Sri Lankan Army to shame in the civil war. Just because Pirbakaran said `Get him,' former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by an LTTE human bomb at Sriperumbudur. By the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, who was all set to get back to gaddi, the LTTE wrote its own death warrant. India that had lost some 1,000 soldiers in the Peace-Keeping Force operations in Sri Lanka withdrew the buffer it had provided to the Tamils in the North and East of Sri Lanka. The better equipped Sri Lankan Army got the LTTE in its stranglehold and committed untold atrocities on the Tamils, particularly the Tigers. All his escape routes were closed, and the Tiger Pirbakaran was a sitting duck to the Lankan Army. Subsequently, the then LTTE ideologue, Anton Balasingham, regretted the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, much too late. The LTTE ideologue is believed to have told Erik Solheim, who brokered the peace talks between Sri Lanka and the LTTE in 2002, that he regretted the Rajiv assassination, unofficially though. This is there in the book, `To End A Civil War: Norway's Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka,' authored by Mark Slater. The book says the LTTE had felt that if Rajiv Gandhi were to come back to power, there would be a combined attack by India and Sri Lanka on the Tigers. However, there was a twist in the tail. Pirbakaran did not confide about his conspiracy with Balasingham. He shared the idea with LTTE intelligence chief Pottuamman. Pirbakaran had for long been lying that the assassination was not his idea. Some time later, Pirbakaran had told Balasingham the truth of his conspiracy in the Rajiv killing. Balasingham, too, died in London of cancer in 2006. It is believed that Balasingham had tried to express regret to India on the Rajiv assassination but had failed. Whatever the truth, Pirbakaran was a fascist who defeated the cause of Tamil Eelam by his extra-territorial killings.