Senior Tamil official apologises for Gandhi assassination

A senior Tamil Tiger leader has apologised to India for the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a Tiger suicide bomber.

“I would say it is a great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy for which we deeply regret and we call upon the Government of India and people of India to be magnanimous to put the past behind,” said the Tigers’ chief negotiator Anton Balasingham.

He made his comments in an interview with India’s NDTV news channel to be aired today. NDTV released some of the transcripts ahead of the broadcast.

The Tigers killed Gandhi to protest India’s involvement, during Gandhi’s tenure, in Sri Lanka’s civil war. The Tigers have acknowledged their role in the attack in the past, but this is the strongest expression of regret yet from the rebels.

Balasingham’s comments came as mounting violence in Sri Lanka threatens to torpedo a shaky 2002 ceasefire that ended a bloody civil war, which left some 65,000 people dead in the island nation.

But the context for the comment – and whether it was part of a larger strategy to court Indian support – was not immediately clear.

Balasingham said the Tigers, formally called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, had given India a commitment that it would not target its leaders again and would welcome a greater Indian involvement in the peace talks between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government.

The Tigers have pledged not to work against India’s interests, Balasingham told NDTV, saying India should be “actively involved in the peace process”.

Gandhi, the son of assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was killed in an explosion triggered by a female Tamil Tiger who greeted him while he was campaigning for elections in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991.

The Tigers were angered by Gandhi’s decision to send Indian troops as peacekeepers to northern Sri Lanka in 1987 as part of an accord with the Sri Lankan government to broker peace.

The Indian troops ended up fighting with the Tigers and withdrew from the island nation in 1990.