NEW DELHI: Having burnt its fingers trying to broker an aborted peace accord in Sri Lanka in 1987, India is not likely to accept Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran’s appeal for New Delhi’s involvement in the current peace initiative between him and Colombo.

“India’s participation is crucial for the peace process. We do not want to alienate India. Without the support and sympathy of the people and government of India, this problem cannot be solved,” Prabhakaran declared at a press conference deep in Tiger-controlled territory in northern Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

But Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Thursday ruled out any role by India in the proposed talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers.

“We are not going to be part of any negotiations or interfere in any talks between the Sri Lanka government and the LTTE (Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam),” Vajpayee said in his first reaction to Prabakharan’s plea that India play a role in efforts to end the 19-year-old civil war in Sri Lanka.

However, he said the government would “sympathetically” consider the request to extend medical assistance to the ailing Tigers’ spokesman, Anton Balasingham, in India.

Indeed, there is little chance that New Delhi, which was once deeply involved in the Tamil conflict and had its peacekeeping troops in Sri Lanka, will change its declared intention not to get involved in the civil war of its southern neighbour.

This is because first, Prabhakaran is wanted in this country for the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, blamed on the Tamil Tigers. Second, the intentions of the Tigers’ chief leader are regarded as suspect here.

The editor of ‘Frontline’ magazine, N Ram, described Wednesday’s press conference as a “fiasco” for the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, because it indicated no headway in a final settlement to Tamil rebels’ violent campaign for a separate homeland.

The LTTE is due to begin peace talks in May with the Sri Lankan government in Thailand, aimed at ending the conflict that has claimed 64,000 lives.

Prabhakaran, who faced a barrage of questions on the assassination from Indian journalists at Wednesday’s press conference, said unemotionally that he thought Gandhi’s assassination “tragic”, but that it was best relegated to the past.

Speaking in the Tamil language, Prabhakaran said: “We want to engage the government of India. Our people love India and the people of India. We are culturally and ethnically linked to the Indian subcontinent. India is our fatherland.”

But Prabhakaran and the LTTE backed out of the 1987 peace accord brokered by India after the Sri Lankan navy arrested 20 top LTTE cadres in the Palk Straits, in violation of the terms of the accord.

After Gandhi refused to intervene, the captured LTTE men committed suicide by swallowing their trademark cyanide capsules. Prabhakaran declared war against the Indian army, which was overseeing implementation of the accord.

After fighting a bloody and inconclusive war with the LTTE in the jungles of northern Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990, in which 1,150 Indian soldiers died, the Indian army withdrew from the island nation and left the LTTE crippled but still a viable fighting force.

The Gandhi assassination also had consequences for local Indian politics. It proved disastrous for the regional DMK, which has always backed the Tigers.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.