Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on Monday appeared to soft-pedal his controversial remarks about V Prabhakaran,chief of the LTTE which he described as a "terrorist organisation" and the Congress also seemed to be accepting it. While Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma asserted that Prabhakaran is a proclaimed offender and his LTTE a terrorist outfit,Priyanka Gandhi refused to be drawn into the controversy created by Congress ally Karunanidhi's yesterday's comments. "LTTE was not started as an extremist organisation like the Naxalite movement. It was started as a liberation movement but down the road it has now become a terrorist organisation." Karunanidhi said his interview to a television channel on Sunday was "misinterpreted" and "blown out of proportion". "I had given the interview for more than one hour and answered questions on various subjects. But only one sentence was picked up," he said. "I don't see him like that. Prabhakaran is my good friend. I am not a terrorist," he had told the interviewer when asked whether he saw the LTTE chief as a terrorist. Those in Prabhakaran's group may have taken to terrorism. But that is not Prabhakaran's fault,the Tamil Nadu CM had said. Today he said Prabhakaran started LTTE as a freedom movement but many of his men have turned into terrorists. On MDMK chief Vaiko's remarks that the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi had been forgotten by the people,Karunanidhi said the Sriperumpudur (where Gandhi fell to a LTTE suicide bomber) incident could never be forgotten by anyone in the country. "No one has forgotten Sriperumbdur. It is the place where Rajiv Gandhi was brutally killed. Noone can forget the sad incident. "When asked for land for the expansion of the Rajiv Gandhi memorial at Sriperumbudur,we had allotted the required land. We have named a grand modernised IT corridor after Rajiv Gandhi in his memory," the Chief Minister said. Asked for his remarks that he would be saddened if Prabhakaran was killed in the ongoing offensive by the Sri Lankan army,he said "I will regret whoever is killed. That is humanitarianism. I will greet you also wishing you a long life." Campaigning in Amethi,Priyanka said "I don't want to comment on this. I am focussing on these two constituencies (Amethi and Rae Bareli). On these issues you may actually talk to my mother,Manmohan Singhji and my brother (Rahul) about it." At the AICC briefing in Delhi,party spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said "the Chief Minister has already clarified his stand." Replying to a question,she said certainly the Congress would want Prabhakaran as he is the main accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and would demand his extradition to India. In stronger comments,Sharma said at a press conference in Bhubaneswhar distinction should be made between ethnic Sri Lankan Tamils and terrorist outfit LTTE and it would be a mistake to equate the two. BJP spokesman Arun Jaitley said the Congress has become "very weak" that it cannot even object to the "objectionable" statements of the Tamil Nadu chief minister. "The Congress has become very weak and it finds that it has no no longer the right to even seriously object to the objectionable comments of the Chief Minister," he told reporters.
