‘LTTE, not RAW, tried to kill Pak envoy’

COLOMBO: It was LTTE and not India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), that attempted to assassinate Bashir Wali Mohmand when he was Pakistan’s High Commissioner in Sri Lanka three years ago, claimed Sri Lanka sleuths.


Interrogation of arrested LTTE cadre in recent weeks had revealed that the LTTE had set off the blast at Kolpitty junction on August 14, 2006, and that Mohmand was not a deliberately chosen target, reported the weekly Lakbimanews. The LTTE’s plan had been to attack any VVIP convoy taking that route at that time.

The LTTE cadre came to know that the VVIP he had struck was the Pakistani envoy only after the blast, which killed seven Sri Lankan security men.

On return to Pakistan after completing his term, Mohmand charged that India’s RAW was behind the attempt on his life in Colombo.

The fact that the attack had taken place on Pakistan’s Independence Day led to some commentators looking at it from the India-Pakistan angle.

In Sri Lanka, however, Defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said that the Pakistani envoy was attacked because the LTTE was angry that Pakistan was arming the Sri Lankan security forces, when most other major powers, including India, had refused to sell arms to the island nation.

10,000 ESCAPED FROM REFUGEE CAMPSL: A survey conducted by the Government Agent (GA) of Vavuniya district in north Sri Lanka has revealed that at least 10,000 refugees have escaped from the camps located there. “The results of the survey have been forwarded to the security forces stationed in Vavuniya to conduct an investigation into the matter,” P S M Charles, the GA of Vavuniya district, told The Nation weekly. According to the official, many refugees who had left the camps, purportedly for medical treatment at various hospitals, had failed to return.

P K Balachandran