Colombo, March 8: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) owns 11 merchant vessels with sophisticated technology, according to the prestigious Lloyd's List, the world's leading shipping and insurance publication.The local Midweek Mirror, quoting a report on the international arms trade, says one of the world's deadliest guerrilla armies operates these vessels under various flags convenience and spends 95 per cent of its time on freight forward commercial work.But its real role is to supply explosives and other material to support the Tiger guerrilla efforts.The LTTE is already known to have some military naval capability, primarily motor boats with well documented regular clashes with the Sri Lankan navy. Its merchant fleet is allegedly registered in Panama, Honduras and Liberia and operated by Tiger front companies across Asia. The paper also said the charges are contained in a dossier titled The Arms Fixers: Controlling the brokers and shipping agents, released by the British American Security Information Council.According to the report, the Tigers long embroiled in violent separatist insurgency against the Sri Lankan government, have an arms procurement headed by a man called Kumaran Pathanathan. This is known as kp department and operates a merchant shipping network known as the `sea pigeons'.The sea pigeons operations have been built up since the 1980's with the help of an unnamed Mumbai-based shipping magnate.It is mentioned that except for the provisional Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the LTTE is the only insurgent organisation that is known to have at its own disposal a fleet of deep-sea going vessels.Army spokesman brigadier Palitha Fernando, when contacted, said, "Since the information was contained in the list of a reputed shipping and insurance company, we have to go by it."
