Sri Lanka urges curbs on separatists' funding

September 21, 2000
Web posted at: 8:36 AM HKT (0036 GMT)

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- Sri Lanka's foreign minister called on Wednesday for concerted global action to curb funding for separatist movements, which, in his country, he said, abducted children to use as soldiers.

Lakshman Kadirgamar said his government was fighting separatist rebels who abducted children and brainwashed them into killers trained to commit suicide if caught.

Children as young as 7 were being recruited by the Tamil Tiger guerrillas to fight government forces, but more than 100 of them had surrendered, Kadirgamar said.

"In our case (the use of child soldiers) is particularly vicious because these children are not only brainwashed. They are brainwashed to the extent that cyanide capsules are put around their necks which they are programmed to bite if they are captured," he told a news conference at the United Nations.

The Sri Lankan official said that government forces had found "a lot of blue bodies" at the scene of battles with the Tamil rebels. "Cyanide turns you blue," he said.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had made a pledge to the U.N. in 1998 that it would not recruit persons below 17.

Sri Lanka says it is imperative for other nations to curb fund raising used to finance "terrorism" in other states. Kadirgamar said a U.N. survey into the scope of fund raising could help.

"The moment you find that funds are being used to attack another democratic country 20-25,000 miles away we must wake up...we must stamp out fund raising," he said.

The LTTE are fighting for a separate state for minority Tamils in Sri Lanka's north and east in battles that have killed more than 61,000 people since 1983.

Kadirgamar said his government stood by a proposal to devolve government power to regions, granting them high degrees of local economy and with the central government retaining power over issues like defence and foreign affairs.

The proposal has been temporarily shelved after the government was unable to win a majority two-third backing from parliament last month.

The issue was expected to feature predominantly in the run up to parliamentary elections on October 10, Kadirgamar said.

"The president has said she is determined to put this bill back in parliament in a couple of months' time, to see what the people say," he said.

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