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by ANTON NONIS

Allegations by the LTTE to that the Air Force and the Navy are engaged in infiltrating into areas controlled by them have created discomfort in the forces leading to speculate whether the LTTE was involved in some kind of irregular activities when the peace process is in progress.

Senior sources of the forces say that surveillance of any part of the country (aerial or coastal) is part of their duties. The country is under one government and the forces are liable to carry out surveillance missions in any part, be it Talaimannar in the North or any other area in the deep South, if it was deemed such activities necessary for security reasons.

An official of the Air Force said that there is nothing new in these surveillance missions. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) had been deployed in such exercises and had been carried out from 1996. These were mainly for the defence of the country from LTTE attacks. The UAV is a small flying craft which has a very low noise level. It has a fairly long wing span and a very short fuselage. It is remote-controlled by radio from the ground base.

The LTTE's allegations that these UAVs fly very low over villages causing alarm has been discounted by the Air Force as totally untrue. At low heights, the machine cannot be controlled and hence is made to fly at a height of approximately 10,000 feet. Detection of such small type machines at that height is extremely difficult and the Air Force surmises that the LTTE allegations are mere speculations.

In the past, the Air Force had been able to monitor activities of the LTTE. Now that the peace mission is in progress, there should not be any breach of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Any suspicions gathered by the UAVs are passed on to the authorities and to the peace monitors and peace secretaries for the required protective action.

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