JAFENA, Sri Lanka, July 31, Reuter: A crowd of Sri Lankan Tamils nearly mobbed an Indian General today when he asked Tamil guerrillas to surrender their weapons, Indian and Sri Lankan army officers said.

The guerrillas of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who control much of the northern Jaffna peninsula, refused to hand over their arms under a peace accord for Sri Lanka signed by the Indian and Sri Lankan governments, the Officers said.

They said they would not do so without orders from their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran who has been in New Delhi for more than a week.

Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has been trying to persuade Prabhakaran to accept the accord, which aims to end the Island’s ethnic conflict. Officers said the rebels apparently feared he was a prisoner in the Indian capital.

A crowd of Tamils rocked a station wagon carrying Major General Harkirat Singh, commander of more than 3,000 Indian troops in the Jaffna peninsula, the officers said.

The crowd ran after Singh’s car shouting: “We want Prabhakaran, we want our leader back,” they added.

“The greeting by the crowds was less than cordial”, a Sri Lankan Brigadier who witnessed the scene said. “They let themselves go a bit and let their feelings go”.

Singh shrugged off the car rocking incident, saying “That is just normal mob tendency”.

Asked if the Tamils were angry, he said, “They shouted ‘we want our leader. We want our leader”.

Singh was speaking to reporters flown to Jaffna to witness the expected surrender of the Tamil rebels as a ceasefire took effect this afternoon under the Indo Sri Lankan accord.

His superior, General Depinder Singh, Chief of the Indian Army’s southern command, told reporters, “We would have loved to have obliged you, but I don’t think the surrender ceremony is going to happen today”.

“The green light apparently has not come to the Tamil Tigers here”.

A Sri Lankan officer commented: “Apparently there is some kind of communication gap. They haven’t got the word yet. They are waiting for word from Prabhakaran in Delhi”.

Another Sri Lankan officer said the Tigers stopped Indian troops when they tried to march into

Jaffna city yesterday.

The advance guard under Indian Brigadier E.W. Fernandez were stopped at Maviddipura, 13 km from the city, and told they could continue only if they left their weapons behind, he said.

“They went back diplomatically,” the Sri Lankan officer said. “It seems they (the Indians) have not diagnosed the situation here properly”, he added.

General Markirat Singh told reporters that he would have a second meeting with the Tigers in the afternoon and he had asked Delhi to send a message to them from Prabhakaran telling them to lay down their arms.

“I hope it comes. It must come, he said.

The message never arrived and a Sri Lankan officer said that when the Indian General went to the meeting the Tigers refused to talk to him.

“The Tigers have said no. They won’t hand over their weapons”, the Sri Lankan officer added.

The deadline for the handover under the peace accord is 3:30 p.m. Monday.

Asked what he would do if the Tigers refused to surrender after Monday, General Depinder Singh said: “When a certain deadline is crossed and we have the necessary knowledge that a sizeable amount of weapons is still out, we’ll go and look for them”.

He said his force of more than 3,000 men would never replace the Sri Lankan army in its role of fighting the Tamil Tigers.

Reporters saw simm mortars and small Soviet built personnel carriers being unloaded from big Indian air force Soviet built II-76 four-jet transport aircraft.

Sri Lankan officers said it was too early to tell whether the Indians might get into shooting war with the rebels but they were also. Bringing in artillery.

“You can’t use heavy guns here because of the civilian population”, a Sri Lankan officer commented. “If the Indians think bringing in heavy equipment will solve the problem; they will prove the whole world wrong. This is an infantryman’s war,” he said.

Article extracted from this publication >>  August 7, 1987