Give Death Certificate of Prabharakan : India to Lanka !!!

India has asked the Sri Lanka government to provide the death certificate of slain LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in a meeting of Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and National Security Advisor M K Narayanan with President Mahinda Rajapaksa here.
Prabhakaran was in the wanted list of India in several criminal cases including the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi – whose 18th death anniversary is being observed today. The confirmation of his death will effectively close most of these cases.

Notably, no other concrete evidence is available on the death of Prabhakaran apart from the footage of his dead body, which was released by island government this Tuesday a day after he is believed to have been shot dead. The Sri Lankan, on its part though, has said that they also have a confirmation to prove that the man killed was indeed Prabhakaran.

Meanwhile, Narayanan and Menon held talks with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on condition of Tamil civilians.

The two officials had a breakfast meeting with Rajapaksa at his Temple Trees residence where immediate issues like the rehabilitation of displaced Tamils in the north and the east -- who have undergone enormous misery and hardship during the recent war between the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE – was discussed.

The Indian delegation also apprised Rajapaksa of the concerns expressed by New Delhi and pressed him to take political steps to ensure "effective devolution of power" so that Tamils in the island nation could live with dignity and equality.

New Delhi is said to have prepared a Rs 500 crore rehabilitation package for the displaced people in Sri Lanka.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had earlier announced a Rs 100-crore relief package for Lankan Tamils in addition to the Rs 25 crore aid given by Tamil Nadu government.

Sri Lanka’s Tamils Voice Misgivings !!!

Sri Lankans were given the day off Wednesday as the government declared a national holiday to celebrate its victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels. Men leaning out of cars, honking and waving the national flag, could be seen cruising through the capital here.

In this city’s ethnic Tamil enclaves, however, the mood was more subdued. Many Tamils, long caught between a government that distrusted them and a rebel movement that brooked no Tamil moderates, welcomed the end of the war even as they nursed doubts about the government’s promises of unity, reconciliation and equality.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa reached out to the country’s Tamil minority, about 12 percent of the population, in his victory speech before Parliament on Tuesday. But his future actions — in forging a political settlement, in rebuilding the economies of war-ravaged Tamil areas, in granting equality to marginalized individuals — will determine whether a postwar Sri Lanka will be acceptable to the Tamils and the Tamil diaspora that financed the rebels.

“If the president does everything he said he would do, there won’t be another Prabhakaran,” V. Sivakumar, a 32-year-old Tamil, said, referring to Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tigers chief whom the Sri Lankan military said it killed on Monday.

Mr. Sivakumar was working Wednesday morning behind the counter of a drugstore in Wellawatte, a Tamil neighborhood recognizable by the presence of the ethnic group’s Hindu temples and kiosks selling flower garlands.

Most shops were closed, and the streets were quiet in Wellawatte, which the authorities have raided in the past in their search for Tamil Tiger rebels or sympathizers. Unlike the majority Sinhalese, who are Buddhist, the Tamils here must report periodically to the police and carry identification papers stating the names of people allowed to live at a particular address.

“The police visit my place every two weeks,” said S. Krishnamoorthy, 27, another worker at the drugstore. “Now that the war is over, we hope that we will be more free to live in Colombo and to travel inside Sri Lanka.”

The country’s Sinhalese majority began discriminating against the Tamils after the country gained independence from Britain in 1949. The situation eventually led to the rise of the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that practiced conventional warfare but also pioneered the use of guerrilla tactics like suicide bombing. Between 80,000 and 100,000 people were killed during the 26-year war, according to the United Nations.

The Tamil Tigers pressed Tamil civilians here and overseas to finance their efforts and silenced Tamil moderates looking for a compromise with the government through assassinations.

“That obstacle by the name of Prabhakaran is no longer there,” Douglas Devananda, a former Tamil fighter who is now a minister of social services in the government, said in an interview. “So now we will be able to achieve the Tamil-speaking people’s aspirations.”

Mr. Devananda said the government must now “fully implement” a 1987 peace accord, rejected by the Tamil Tigers, which would allow for power sharing and grant greater autonomy to historically Tamil provinces in the north and east.

Tamil leaders also said the government’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in Tamil areas, as well as its accounting of the military’s conduct toward civilians, would greatly influence any reconciliation.

“This is a critical issue,” said R. Yogarajan, national organizer of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress, a Tamil political party. “There are areas, especially in the east, where people have not been allowed to resettle yet. We hope the government will allow that to happen soon.”

Mr. Yogarajan said he was resigned about the Sri Lankan military’s reported shelling of Tamil areas where civilians had been trapped, actions that have drawn international criticism.

“We have to work toward the future, not look back,” he said. “It’s difficult. But what else can we do?”

At the Sinthu Cafe in the Wellawatte area, residents sitting at the small restaurant’s three tables still appeared apprehensive about speaking out loud about the Tamil Tigers, even though its leadership was apparently wiped out early this week.

“I’m happy the war is over, but I can’t say what other people feel,” said P. Sasikumar, 29.
Like many in the neighborhood, the restaurant’s owner, P. Baskaran, 34, came from Jaffna, a town in this island nation’s northernmost area. Government forces captured the Jaffna area from the Tamil Tigers in the 1990s, but Jaffna remained behind a rebel-held section of territory.
“The road to Jaffna was blocked, so the economy there stagnated,” said Mr. Baskaran, who moved here two years ago because he could not find work in Jaffna. “Now that the war is over, the government needs to develop Jaffna economically. If it does that, there won’t be any problems.”

At a bookstore nearby, the owner, N. Panchadsaram, 57, who was also from Jaffna, said he was optimistic about the future. Of course he had grievances, including the fact that the police station in his neighborhood had few, if any, Tamil officers.

“These are all political problems,” he said. “In our private lives, we Tamil and the Sinhalese live together peacefully. We just need a change in this country’s political structure.”

Tamils, Sinhalese must share power for Lanka peace: USA !!!

With the end of civil war in Sri Lanka after military victory over the LTTE, the US has asked Colombo to initiate a "power sharing arrangement" among Tamils, Sinhalese and others for a "lasting peace" as well as to heal the wounds of the conflict that killed thousands.

"To truly defeat terrorism, the Government of Sri Lanka needs to begin to heal the wounds of the conflict and work toward building a democratic, prosperous, tolerant and united Sri Lanka and work toward justice and reconciliation for both sides," the State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, said in a statement.

"A lasting peace in Sri Lanka depends on Sinhalese, Tamils and all other Sri Lankans working together to achieve new power sharing arrangements that safeguard and promote the rights of all Sri Lankans," Kelly said.

Welcoming the cessation of fighting, the United States, however, said it remains deeply concerned of the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons uprooted by the recent fighting.

India set to counter China's influence in Lanka !!!

India will tell Sri Lanka that it has a definite interest in helping the island nation take on reconstruction and will be actively engaged in helping Colombo.

This will be the essence of the message that foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and national security adviser M K Narayanan will give to President Mahinda Rajapaksa when they meet him on Wednesday during a day-long visit, the first after the LTTE was militarily crushed.

With a greater engagement in Sri Lanka, not hampered by the complications of an LTTE presence, India ultimately hopes to counter the growing presence of China in its southern neighbourhood. Over the past few years, China has stepped in as one of Colombo's largest defence suppliers after India found itself constrained from giving offensive weaponry and other defence assistance to Sri Lanka for the current conflict.

Naturally, China took advantage of such an opening to expand its influence, seeking and getting a valuable port, Hambantota, in the Indian Ocean.

The government's position and its agenda for talks on Wednesday was shared with Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi who visited the PM on Tuesday.

After the heat of the elections, Karunanidhi's stand on Sri Lanka has been measured, say sources. This will help India expand its role in Lanka in the months and years ahead.

What India will initially be looking for are some quick steps that can be taken by the executive in Colombo — mainly in relief and rehabilitation of the displaced Tamils. India would also be looking for a kind of statement on the future of the Tamils and how Sri Lanka plans to integrate them into the mainstream. Rajapakse did not give a roadmap in his speech to parliament on Tuesday but India will tell him that this would go a long way in getting the international community on his side.

For the present, the international imperative is to assist the Sri Lankans to set up relief and rehabilitation centres for the thousands of displaced persons. India is moving its hospital to Vavuniya and rotating its doctors who have been on duty for over a month now. In addition, India will be sending material for 5,000 shelters which will house about 25,000 people.

The devolution of powers to Tamils itself will take a while because Rajapakse doesn't control the parliament in its present composition. The likes of JVP and other Sinhala nationalist parties will not allow him to work out a generous devolution package even if he wants to. Therefore, Indian officials believe he could actually go in for early elections to get a fresh mandate riding the victory wave.

Prabhakaran a born survivor, recalls ex-aide !!!

Tamil Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, whose outfit conceded defeat, was very clear about his demand for a Tamil Eelam and asked his cadres to shoot him if he ever swayed away from it, his former confidante has said.

“But his commitment for Tamil Eelam could not be doubted. He even told the LTTE members that in case he (Prabhakaran) swayed away from the desire to carve out a separate Tamil Eelam, then he should not be spared and killed,” said his former aid turned foe D Siddharthan who formed the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam after falling out with the LTTE leader.

Siddharthan, who along with the former LTTE leaders Krishnan and Guhan opened the first LTTE office in London in the 1970s, split with Prabhakaran following differences. Their enmity became so acute became that Prabhakaran had ordered for Siddharthan killing.

Siddharthan, who has been provided adequate government security due to the LTTE threat, said Prabhakaran was a dangerous man. “Prabhakaran could not be trusted. He never liked a no. He is a survivalist,” Siddharthan said.

Siddharthan said he remembered of an incident in the late 1970s when the LTTE leaders during a meeting in a house in Jaffna heard of a police jeep sound. “Prabhakaran ordered the light of the house to be switched off and make it pitch dark. But when the danger was over and the lights came on. I was surprised to see that Prabhakaran who was seated next to me had vanished.”

“I could not realise where he slipped. After the lights came, I saw a smiling Prabhakaran emerging from one of the entrances of the house,” he said. “We also subsequently realised that the keep that had moved past the house was not a police convoy,” he said. Siddharthan said nobody could easily gauge his “survivalist” mentality.

“I split with Prabhakaran in the beginning of 1980 and he then considered me his enemy and was looking to finish me,” Siddharthan said. On the death of Prabhakaran’s son Charles Anthony, Siddarthan said it was possible that Prabhakaran would have tried to save him.

Jaya calls for equal rights for Lankan Tamils, silent on Eelam !!!

AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa on Wednesday said the elimination of LTTE will not wipe out the "injustice" rendered to the Tamils in Sri Lanka and asked Colombo to ensure equal rights to all citizens.

Jayalalithaa, who had on the eve of elections asserted that Tamil Eelam was the only solution to resolve the ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, said the Sri Lankan government should address all genuine grievances of the Tamil community in the aftermath of the fall of LTTE.

"The unrest in Sri Lanka was triggered off only because the Tamils of the island were relegated, post-independence, to the status of secondary citizens in their own homeland.

"Decimation of the LTTE or the killings of its leaders will not wipe away the injustice meted out to this large community which had its roots in Sri Lanka," she said.

The Rajapakse government "should realise this basic truth," and address all the genuine grievances of the "oppressed" Tamil community and come out with necessary constitutional changes to ensure equal rights to all citizens in Sri Lanka, she said without referring to her Eelam demand nor reports of the death of LTTE chief Prabhakaran.

Prabhakaran is alive, claims pro-LTTE website !!!

A pro-LTTE website, Tamilnet.com, on Tuesday claimed that the Tamil Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran is still "alive and safe", a day after Sri Lankan army announced that it has killed the top rebel leader.

"I wish to inform the Global Tamil community distressed witnessing the final events of the war that our beloved leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is alive and safe," LTTE's International Relations head S Pathmanathan was quoted as saying by the website, which usually puts out the rebels' version on the battle with the Sri Lankan armed forces.

"He (Prabhakaran) will continue to lead the quest for dignity and freedom for the Tamil people," he said.

The website, however, did not give the details of Prabhakaran's location.

The army had claimed Prabhakaran and his top aides came out of their last hiding place in a small convoy of van and an ambulance and tried to drive out of the war zone, but were gunned down.

Pathmanathan said the Sri Lankan army and government deliberately came up with the story detailing the demise of the leader of the LTTE.

"We categorically reject this and wish to inform the Tamil community to be vigilant and to exercise maximum restraint whilst grieving for the loss of Tamil civilian lives in the barbaric conduct of the final chapters of this battle," he said.

Prabhakaran's myth dies with him, dreams of Eelam live on !!!

Even in death, Velupillai Prabhakaran's eyes remained his most compelling feature, wide open and clear, as though focused on a goal.

For more than 30 years, Sri Lankan Tamils relied on those eyes, and the single-minded focus behind them, to achieve their goal: a separate homeland called Tamil Eelam, free from the "racist Sinhala state" that Mr. Prabhakaran had always insisted was bent on his people's destruction.

The loyalty they returned to Mr. Prabhakaran could well explain their lingering denial of his death yesterday, even as grisly footage of the Tamil Tigers' founding leader, face frozen in a death stare with a bullet wound in his forehead, made the online rounds.

"A lot of our Tamil people, and a lot means most of them, don't believe this story," a onetime associate of the rebel leader, now living in Toronto, said yesterday. "I also don't want to think that way, that he's dead."

Whether they want to or not, Tamils will eventually have to reconcile their devotion with their erstwhile leader's ultimate failure to bring about Eelam before his death on the weekend, during a brutal last drive by the Sri Lankan army to end 26 years of on-and-off civil war with the Tigers.

Once they do, that devotion will die along with him, observers say.

"My feeling is that his defeat spells an end to a good part of that grip he had over the Tamil people," a grip based mainly on his undisputed success at building the Tigers into an efficient fighting force, said Wesley Wark, a University of Toronto history professor and expert on international security.

"He didn't deliver; he brought death and destruction and he came to a kind of inglorious end," Dr. Wark said, "so right there, a good part of the mythos of Prabhakaran is going to just kind of vanish into thin air."
The remainder of the rebel supremo's grip, derived from his ability to coerce Tamils at home and abroad to follow his vision to the exclusion of all others, appears equally doomed now that he's no longer around to enforce loyalty, Dr. Wark said. "His capacity to exercise terror from beyond the grave is zero, and I think for that reason as well, he will rapidly become a kind of ghost, or has become a ghost already."
It would be a quick and ignominious fate for a man whose tactics - suicide attacks on civilians, killings of two world leaders and scores of Tamil rivals, recruitment of child soldiers - have played out in gruesome, full-colour reality for the better part of three decades, despite Mr. Prabhakaran's unlikely packaging. Slight, portly and soft-spoken, the mustachioed leader appeared anything but menacing, and was most often photographed smiling, though from behind piercing dark eyes.

"He's really human, an ordinary human," the Toronto man, who grew up in a neighbouring village to Mr. Prabhakaran and helped him during the Tigers' formative years, recently told The Globe. "But always he is very much focused [and] nothing can divert him from this focus; that's why he has been able to carry this struggle, the honest truth of the cause."

This bloody-minded consistency - reinforced by Mr. Prabhakaran's personal moral code, including strictures on his soldiers' use of alcohol and tobacco, and bans on sexual promiscuity and killing people while they're eating - earned him more loyalty than any charisma he had, the man said.

"It's not a cult," he said. "The respect came because of his focus and from his not wavering from that focus."

Some were also held in thrall by Mr. Prabhakaran's status as a highly prized fugitive, earned after his first political assassination - he shot the Tamil mayor of Jaffna for being too co-operative with the Sinhalese-led government in Colombo - in 1975, when he was just 20.

"There is an admiration, but there is also a sense of responsibility and protection towards him that they feel," said another Toronto man, who served two years with the Tigers, describing his unit's first meeting with the leader in 1984.

It happened one morning at a jungle training camp in India's Tamil Nadu province, where the man had put in six months of gruelling drills after helping to build the camp. He was milling about with other soldiers when "suddenly somebody came and told us that Prabhakaran was almost there."

The young recruits gathered at the camp entrance to watch a jeep pull up and their leader climb down from it, rifle in hand. "He was walking and he had a .22 rifle with him," the man said. "He was shooting at the birds. He has good aim, actually; very good."

Mr. Prabhakaran addressed the troops with stories of his own life as a soldier after he founded the armed movement in 1972, interviewed the recruits one-on-one and accompanied them to the firing range, where "he actually told them how to hold the rifle," the man said. When a rookie misfired a grenade short of his target, spraying the commander's thighs with shrapnel, he did not punish him or hold a grudge. Mr. Prabhakaran even taught his men how to maintain adequate blood circulation while riding a bicycle, the Tigers' earliest form of transport around northern Sri Lanka, for long distances.

"He is a very practical man. That is his strength ... and a limitation, too."

While it appealed to many a Tamil's sense of grievance over Sinhalese discrimination, Mr. Prabhakaran's eye-for-an-eye sense of justice and his failure to anticipate the worst of its consequences turned the man off. Fearing his questions might get him killed, he fled the movement in 1984 and the country soon afterward.

In the ensuing years, Mr. Prabhakaran used increasing force against the Sinhalese, but also against Tamils who failed to share his vision. The compliant remainder enjoyed the protection of a de facto Tiger government in parts of the north and east, while their kin in Canada and abroad sent money home to pay for it, often willingly, but sometimes under threat of reprisal.

The talk among some Tamils now, even as their leader lay dead among the corpses of his people, their would-be Eelam a scorched wasteland, is not of reconciliation with the Sinhalese majority, but of a renewed struggle for independence.

"It is the duty of the diaspora to take this [forward], because we totally believe that we can't live together," Mr. Prabhakaran's old associate in Toronto said.

Dr. Wark has his doubts, especially if the Sri Lankan government, spurred on by international pressure, follows its victory over the Tigers with sincere measures to address Tamil grievances.
"Their attention is going to be focused less on the hallowed legacy of their former leader and more on [the question], can this Sri Lankan government change its stripes?" he said. "I think that'll be a big test."

Prabhakaran: The Life and Death of a Tiger !!!

The portly rebel leader with the bushy mustache and trusty Browning pistol turned a small band of poorly armed guerrillas into one of the world's most sophisticated and ruthless insurgencies.

But Velupillai Prabhakaran also made a series of mistakes that led the Tamil Tigers to total defeat and his own death at age 54.
At the height of his power, Prabhakaran ruled as a virtual dictator over a shadow state of hundreds of thousands of people in northern Sri Lanka with its own flag, police and court system.

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, HO, FileAP Photo - FILE - In this Nov. 27, 2006 handout file photo provided by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels, is seen after delivering his annual speech from an undisclosed location in rebel controlled north Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan military officials say Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed Monday, May 18, 2009 by government forces.

Two officials confirmed Prabhakaran's death. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, HO, FileAP Photo - FILE - In this Nov. 27, 2008 handout file photo provided by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels, delivers his annual address to Sri Lanka's Tamil minority at an undisclosed location near Colombo, Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan military officials say Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed Monday, May 18, 2009 by government forces. Two officials confirmed Prabhakaran's death.

Sri Lanka said Monday that it had finished off the last of the rebels in the northern war zone and killed Prabhakaran and his top deputies.

To his followers, Velupillai Prabhakaran (pronounced ve-LU-pi-lay PRAH-bah-ka-ran) was the steadfast heart of the battle to establish a breakaway state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority. But his many detractors saw him as the brutal ruler of a suicide cult who repeatedly sabotaged peace deals in pursuit of power.

In more than a quarter-century of civil war, his Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam perfected the art of suicide bombings, assassinated top politicians including former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and fought the Sri Lankan government to a near-standstill.

Prabhakaran's guerrilla force was armed with heavy artillery, a rudimentary air wing that once bombed Colombo's international airport, and a squad of suicide attackers. Its navy consisted of small attack craft, suicide boats laden with explosives, crude submarines and huge smuggling ships.

The rebels reportedly earned as much as $300 million a year from arms and drug smuggling, fake charities and donations from Tamil expatriates.

Prabhakaran rarely appeared in public, preferring to communicate via radio addresses delivered every November.

Tamil Tiger troops, some forcibly recruited when they were children, saw Prabhakaran as their unquestioned leader. He ordered them to abstain from sex, cut personal ties and carry glass vials of cyanide on a necklace so they could kill themselves upon capture.

"He is their brain. He is their heart. He is their god. He is their soul. And the whole organization runs around him," said Indian journalist M.R. Narayan Swamy, who wrote a biography of Prabhakaran.

The rebel leader orchestrated surprise attacks on Sri Lankan bases that killed hundreds of troops and retaliated against government offensives with devastating counterattacks.

The group's penchant for suicide attacks - including the 1998 bombing of the Temple of the Tooth, Sri Lanka's holiest Buddhist shrine - led the United States, European Union and India to outlaw it as a terror organization. The group also assassinated several politicians, including former President Ranasinghe Premadasa.

Though Prabhakaran was sometimes hailed as a master strategist, he also made a series of misjudgments that eventually led to his downfall.

He alienated his strongest allies in India by sending a female suicide bomber to kill Gandhi in 1991, apparent retaliation for sending an Indian peacekeeping mission to Sri Lanka that turned sour.

During negotiations that followed a 2002 cease-fire, he rejected a deal that would have given the rebels broad autonomy over the north and east but not full independence. It was widely seen as the best deal he could ever get.

Prabhakaran said he could not accept anything less than a separate Tamil state, dubbed Eelam. "Thousands of my boys have laid down their lives for Eelam," he told Indian journalist Anita Pratap in 1990. "Their death cannot be in vain."

In 2004, a top commander known as Col. Karuna ran afoul of the Tiger leadership and split from the group with thousands of his fighters.

Prabhakaran called a Tamil boycott of the 2005 presidential election, which helped propel the hard-line Mahinda Rajapaksa to victory. After new peace talks failed, the rebels cut off the water supply to more than 60,000 people in eastern Sri Lanka, provoking an unrelenting government offensive that drove the group out of the east, captured their administrative capital of Kilinochchi, and eventually destroyed them on the battlefield.

Prabhakaran was born on Nov. 26, 1954, and grew up on the Jaffna peninsula, the Tamil minority's cultural heartland, amid the emerging independence movement. Many Tamils felt their culture and rights had been marginalized by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority and wanted a country of their own.

He rose to prominence after killing the mayor of Jaffna in 1975 and used his new militant credentials to create the Tamil Tigers. He and many of his fighters received training from sympathizers in neighboring India, according to Swamy.

The militants waged increasingly brazen attacks against the government in the north, capped by a 1983 ambush that killed 13 soldiers and sparked anti-Tamil riots in Colombo that killed an estimated 2,000 people and are generally seen as the start of the war.

Even as he fought the government, Prabhakaran waged war on rival Tamil militant organizations - and any Tamils who dared criticize him - consolidating power and making his group the unquestioned representative of the minority's political aspirations.

Prabhakaran has largely led the Tamil Tigers from fortified underground bunkers rather than the front lines.

"I am like a spider at the center of the web," he told .

On the run for decades, Prabhakaran reportedly destroyed all photos of himself, leaving police referring to an outdated school picture in their hunt for him.

But in later years, photos surfaced of him meeting with commandos before suicide missions or laying wreaths at the funerals of slain fighters. He held a rare news conference in 2002, but went underground again when a cease-fire broke down three years ago.

Prabhakaran met his wife, Madivadani, in 1984 after she and eight other Tamil students protesting the government defied his orders to end a hunger strike. The couple had three children, a daughter, Dwarka, and sons Balachandran and Charles Anthony, who was killed in fighting Monday.

Prez invites Manmohan Singh to be PM !!!

President Pratibha Patil on Wednesday invited Manmohan Singh to be the next Prime Minister of India and asked him to advise her on the council of ministers.

Claiming the support of 322 MPs, Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi had staked claim to form the next Government at a meeting with the President.

The new ministry will be sworn-in on Friday.
Meanwhile, United Progressive Alliance (UPA) partners met on Wednesday to discuss the knotty issue of distribution of ministerial berths and also re-elected Congress President Sonia Gandhi as Chairperson of the grouping.

The meeting at Congress President Sonia Gandhi's 10 Janpath residence was attended by Manmohan Singh and the galaxy of UPA leaders, who have bagged 263 seats in the parliamentary elections.

Sonia Gandhi's name as Chairperson of the UPA was proposed by DMK leader and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and seconded by Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee.

Among those who attended the UPA meeting from the Congress were Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram, AK Antony and General Secretary Rahul Gandhi.

The other members of the Congress-led grouping were there in full strength too – Karunanidhi with grandnephew Dayanidhi Maran, Nationalist Congress Party's (NCP) Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel and National Conference's Farooq Abdullah.

Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh, who switched over to UPA after the elections, also attended.
"It was decided unanimously that Soniaji and Manmohanji along with (letters of) support will meet the honourable president," Mamata said.

With 19 seats, the Trinamool Congress is the UPA's largest ally.

While the wish list of partners like the Trinamool Congress and DMK was still uncertain, National Conference patron Abdullah said his party was not interested in ministerial berths.

Protect Tamils: UN Chief to Lanka !!!

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he is relieved the war appears over in Sri Lanka. But he wants the government to address the "concerns and aspirations" of its minority Tamil population.

Ban told a news conference on Tuesday that "we urgently need to treat the wounds of a war that has alienated the communities on the island for almost three decades."

The UN chief said he would travel to Sri Lanka on Friday. He hoped to visit camps for the thousands of people uprooted by the war.

Prabhakaran is No more , questions still remain !!!

Sri Lanka's army chief said Tamil Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran's body was found on Tuesday, and Sri Lankan TV stations aired video of what appeared to be his corpse, with the top of its head blown off. There was no independent confirmation available.

Private TV stations Derana and Swarnavahini showed soldiers surrounding what they said was Prabhakaran's body, with his trademark moustache and distinctive Tiger stripe camouflage fatigues.

The military said the body was found in a lagoon. A blue cloth covered the top of the head, which appeared shorn off.

The video showed a copy of a military ID tag written in Tamil, bearing the number "0:01", and what appeared to be a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) identity card with his photograph.

The army's commander, General Sarath Fonseka, moments earlier had gone on state TV and radio to announce that the body had been found on Tuesday and positively identified.

"The good news from the war front is that the body of the leader of the terrorist organisation which destroyed the country for the last 30 years, Prabhakaran, has been found this morning by the army. We have identified the body," he said.

Fonseka's announcement came after the LTTE made a statement on a pro-rebel web site saying Prabhakaran, 54, was still alive. "I wish to inform the global Tamil community distressed witnessing the final events of the war that our beloved leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is alive and safe," www.TamilNet.com quoted LTTE diplomatic head Selvarajah Pathmanathan as saying.

State TV on Monday reported that Prabhakaran was dead, and military sources have given differing stories about how and where he was killed.

Fonseka did not give an account of where Prabhakaran' body was found, nor how he was killed.
Sri Lankan troops finished off the last of the LTTE resistance on Monday, wrapping up a three-year offensive to destroy the separatists and win a 25-year-civil war

Prabhakran's Death not confirmed : Karunanithi !!!

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on Tuesday refused to comment on LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran’s death, saying it is "not yet confirmed".

"The news is not yet confirmed. I have nothing to say now on this issue," Karunanidhi told reporters after meeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi at her residence.

“In Tamil Nadu many leaders don't believe Prabhakaran is dead, so I will not react on this,” he said.

Karunanidhi urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Gandhi to take steps for the relief and rehabilitation of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The DMK chief had come to Delhi to formally extend his party's support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in government formation. The DMK has got 18 MPs in the new Lok Sabha.

The DMK chief also presented a shawl to the Congress president to felicitate her on the mandate won by the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls. The UPA has got 263 seats in the new Lok Sabha.

Karunanidhi met Gandhi along with his party colleague T.R. Baalu. Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi too participated in the meeting.

The DMK chief later also met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to whom he repeated his request to take steps for the welfare of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Election 2009 : Result Map !!!

Congress Insulting me : Lalu

Out on a limb with just four MPs now, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad finds he is no longer the Congress' favourite ally.

Lalu is also unlikely to retain his railways portfolio. Apparently unable to take the humiliation any more, at the Cabinet meeting on Monday morning, he asked just why was the Congress is insulting him so many times.

Earlier, Lalu Prasad Yadav admitted that it was a mistake to not have allied with the Congress in Bihar.

Though he got a phone call from Congress president Sonia Gandhi, it has been apparent that he won't have such an easy time getting a Cabinet berth.

Speaking on NDTV, Digivijay Singh said that the Congress did not consider Lalu's party to be a pre-poll ally and sources say the party is not keen on offering ministries to his party at all.

On Sunday, in an apparent bid to reach out to her estranged ally, Congress president Sonia Gandhi telephoned Railway Minister Lalu Prasad and asked him to attend the Cabinet meeting scheduled for Monday.

"UPA chairperson rang up the Railway Minister on Saturday evening and requested him to attend a meeting of the Union Cabinet on Monday," his private secretary Bhola Yadav said.

He, however, did not divulge what transpired during the telephonic talk between the two leaders coming in the backdrop of severe drubbing of RJD-LJP led Fourth Front had in Bihar.

Lanka - LTTE War - A Flash back !!!

Sri Lanka declared a final victory Monday in its decades-old conflict with the Tamil Tigers, after routing the remnants of the rebel army and killing its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Here are the key dates from what was one of Asia's longest-running and bloodiest ethnic conflicts.

1972:
Armed with just a revolver, Velupillai Prabhakaran forms a Tamil militant group that eventually becomes the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

July 23, 1983:
LTTE ambushes an army patrol, killing 13 soldiers in the Jaffna peninsula and sparking anti-Tamil riots elsewhere that leave about 600 people dead

July 8, 1985:
Sri Lanka opens first direct talks with Tamil guerrillas. They fail.

July 29, 1987:
India and Sri Lanka reach agreement on deployment of Indian peacekeeping force

March 24, 1990:
India loses 1,200 troops at the hands of the LTTE, and withdraws to leave the Tigers in control of large swathes of northern Sri Lanka

May 21, 1991:
Former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi killed, allegedly by an LTTE suicide bomber

May 1, 1993:
Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa killed by LTTE suicide bomber

December 2, 1995:
Sri Lankan army captures the Jaffna peninsula

July 18, 1996:
The Tigers overrun an army camp in the northeastern town of Mullaittivu, killing 1,200 troops

October 8, 1997:
The United States declares the LTTE a foreign terrorist organisation

January 25, 1998:
An LTTE suicide bomb devastates Sri Lanka's holiest Buddhist shrine, the Temple of the Tooth, killing 17 people

September 26, 1998:
Tigers overrun Kilinochchi army camp, killing more than 1,000 government soldiers

February 2001:
Britain outlaws the LTTE as a terrorist organisation, followed by Canada and Australia

July 2001:
Suicide attack by Tamil Tigers on the international airport kills 14

February 23, 2002:
Government and Tamil Tiger rebels sign a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement

December 2002:
At peace talks in Norway, the government and rebels agree to share power, with the minority Tamils enjoying autonomy in the mainly Tamil-speaking north and east

March 3, 2004:
Renegade Tamil Tiger commander V. Muralitharan, known as Karuna, leads a damaging split from main rebel movement

January 2, 2008:
Sri Lanka withdraws from the ceasefire agreement and steps up attacks against the Tigers

January 2, 2009:
Sri Lankan forces capture Kilinochchi, leaving the Tigers only the jungle district of Mullaittivu

January 25, 2009:
Sri Lankan troops capture Mullaittivu town, confining the rebels to a stretch of jungle

February 3, 2009:
The Sri Lankan army says it has captured an elaborate underground bunker complex believed to have been the home of the leader of the Tamil Tigers, as well as the rebels' last jungle airstrip

March 13, 2009:
The United Nations human rights chief says both sides in the conflict could be guilty of war crimes

April 14, 2009:
The Tamil Tigers say they are ready to negotiate a ceasefire and restart peace talks. The government refuses and tells them to surrender

April 20, 2009:
Tens of thousands of trapped civilians manage to flee from the shrinking area under rebel control
May 13, 2009:
The UN Security Council for the first time asks warring parties to spare civilians as the world body describes fighting in the last remaining patch of Tiger territory as a "bloodbath" for civilians

May 16, 2009:
Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse says the rebels have been militarily defeated

May 17, 2009:
In an admission of defeat, the Tamil Tigers say their battle "has reached its bitter end" and that they have "decided to silence our guns"

May 18, 2009:
Defence officials say Prabhakaran and his two deputies are shot dead while trying to flee advancing troops.

Army chief Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka declares an end to military operations after troops overrun final LTTE holdout, leaving the entire island under government control.

Prabhakaran : Heart Breaking End !!!

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Velupillai Prabhakaran has been shot dead by the Lankan troops, the Sri Lankan army has said.

The LTTE chief's body has also been found by the Lankan army, which has identified the body.

Following the reports of Prabhakaran's death, the police bandobast has been stepped up in Chennai.

Prabhakaran and his top aides came out of their last hiding place in a small convoy of van and an ambulance and tried to drive out of the war zone, but were gunned down, he said.

The Tiger chief was killed with two others, who are yet to be identified but believed to be his closest associates - LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman and Sea Tigers' chief Soosoi.

The deaths of the top LTTE leaders came a day after Tamil Tigers conceded defeat saying the decades-old battle has reached its "bitter end" and they have decided to "silence" their guns.

Earlier on Monday morning, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara had said that Prabhakarn was still alive but completely encircled by advancing Sri Lankan forces in a tiny jungle area north of Vellamullivaikkal after most of the LTTE's top leaders were found killed.

The army said that its special forces had encircled Prabhakaran, Pottu Aman and Soosoi who were boxed into a 100m x 100m area.