COIMBATORE: A US diplomat of Indian origin who had a stint at the American consulate in Chennai had in a confidential cable hinted that the LTTE could have financially supported the MDMK leader Vaiko, according to Wikileaks.

In a cable sent on May 15, 2006, two days after the DMK was voted to power, Ravi Candadai, the then acting US Consul General in India, while ruling out funding for the LTTE from Tamil Nadu, said: “It may be, however, that some financial support flows the other way, that is, from the LTTE to certain political leaders in Tamil Nadu, notably Vaiko, founder and general secretary of the MDMK.”

To support this theory, Candadai quoted Chandrahasan, a well known Sri Lankan Tamil in Chennai and the founder of Organisation for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation (OfERR).

“Some people, including Tamil refugee NGO leader Chandrahasan, believe that the LTTE provided initial financial support for Vaiko in establishing his MDMK party after he came out of the DMK in 1993,” the diplomat observed.

Describing Vaiko as an outspoken supporter of the LTTE, he, as a matter of caution, added, “but any financial link (with the LTTE) remains unproven.”

Dealing with the issue of sympathy for the LTTE in Tamil Nadu, the cable said the support had vanished almost overnight after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.

Based on information provided by his contacts, the diplomat surmised that substantial financial support for the LTTE came from Tamils living in Canada, the UK, Netherlands and Germany, who contributed 10 pc of their income due to the encouragement of local religious institutions or Tamil cultural organisations. This encouragement was “closer to extortion.”

The cable also gave a clean chit to the then newly installed DMK Government on its anti-LTTE policy saying the party had a record in controlling the outfit between 1996 and 2001.

Candadai also believed that to the average person in Tamil Nadu, the then prevailing situation in Sri Lanka was not of primary interest. “It may seem strange that in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu, which literally means Tamil country, there is little support for the LTTE, an organisation that professes to be dedicated to establishing a homeland for all Tamils,” he quipped.

The perception of the people in Tamil Nadu would remain unchanged unless there were to be major human rights violations against Tamils in Lanka or a huge influx of new refugees into TN from Sri Lanka, the diplomat had concluded. (Express News Service)