LTTE got most arms from Ukraine: Ex-commander
Colombo: The LTTE, vanquished by the Sri
Lankan army in May after a three decade bloody civil war,
procured most of their arms from the former Soviet Republic of
Ukraine as well as China, a former rebel commander has said.
"The LTTE purchased most of its weapons from Ukraine,"
Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, best known as Col. Karuna Amman
said.
"There were many other supply sources in Asia and
Africa, but the main source was Ukraine," the stocky Karuna, a
former bodyguard to slain Velupillai Prabhakaran told Japan's
Kyodo News in an interview in his tightly guarded office here.
Asked if North Korea was a supplier, Karuna, the former
LTTE military commander, now minister for National Integration
and Reconciliation in President Mahinda Rajapaksa's
government, said there was a lot of talk about procuring arms
from the country, but those efforts never succeeded.
But other well-informed military sources in Colombo
quoted by Kyodo said on condition of anonymity that the LTTE
had obtained Chinese arms with North Korean end-user
certificates.
"An investigation team from Japan was here in this
connection some months ago and met with very senior
officials," one of the sources said, adding that "Tokyo knows
the facts."
Karuna, a vice president of Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka Freedom
Party, said most of the arms used by the LTTE were of Russian
and Chinese manufacture.
Bureau Report