A top American military commander has commended the role played by the Sri Lankan Security Forces and the LTTE has been at the receiving end as a result. "I am confident the Sri Lankan military has very best intentions in the world (to defeat LTTE). Surely, they would like to have greater capability and capacity, but the progress they are making is commendable", the US Admiral Timothy Keating, Commander of US Pacific Joint Command, told foreign news correspondents in New York.
"We are very pleased the Sri Lankan Navy has been able to wage an increasingly effective campaign against the LTTE," Admiral Keating said adding that the LTTE would be a decreasingly important factor of much less reach than they are and have been in the past. "We are assured and gratified by the progress that the Sri Lankan military is making, and I think, the Sri Lankan military would be the first to admit that there is work to be done" he was further quoted as saying.
Sri Lankan Army chief Sarath Fonseka said early this week in Colombo that LTTE's '80 percent' of the fighting capabilities have been eliminated. He also claimed that the Sri Lankan troops were just seven kilometres away from the Kilaly lagoon, which links northern Jaffna peninsula to the Wanni mainland along the western coast. Admiral Timothy Keating is the head of the US Pacific Command, with its headquarters in Hawaii, who is also responsible for the US military operations ranging from Australia and New Zealand to China, Taiwan and Japan to India and Sri Lanka. Washington has proscribed the LTTE as an international terrorist outfit since 1997.
LTTE is a ruthless terrorist outfit that has been fighting for a mono ethnic separate homeland for the Tamils in Sri Lanka since 1983. During its 3 decades of existence the outfit has pioneered a large number of terror tactics particularly in the field of suicide bombing, that have been soon copied by the other terror organizations in the world .
Fuelled by extremist tribal ideologies held by their megalomaniac leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and largely foreign funds generated through its false propaganda, LTTE terrorists have killed tens and thousands of innocent civilians in many village massacres, bus bombings , train bombings, ethnic cleansing raids , and etc. The outfit is also included in the UN list of shame for using children for terror attacks.