The Government Peace Secretariat however said Sri Lanka had no intention of inviting India to actively take part as mediator nor does India have any intention of doing so after its involvement in 1987 which had adverse repercussions.

In a telephone interview from his New Delhi residence, former Chief Justice of India and Chairman of the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP), Justice P.N. Bhagwati told the Daily Mirror that while Sri Lanka was running one of the longest civil wars in Asia, it was time both the LTTE and the Government returned to the negotiating table before more innocent lives were brutally massacred in the conflict.

"India should at no point intervene if the LTTE does not agree. If it does intervene it will create a highly negative impact on India as the LTTE are Tamils and a majority of India’s population in Tamil Nadu are also Tamils," Justice Bhagwati said.

State terror is a reality. That is something that the international community has chosen to ignore. When a state is hell-bent on 'secret' ethnic cleansing, head-hunting human rights activists, journalists, intellectuals, parliamentarians, vocal clerics and witnesses of state crimes then what is the duty and responsibility of the citizens?

It is in this context one has to review the Tamil struggle in Sri Lanka. The struggle for liberation against the Sinhala hegemony is seen by the West-dominated international community as terrorism. It is an easy cop-out arising out of intellectual laziness and political convenience and international game plan. The Sinhala state spins its ploys in a word play. It has conveniently hopped into the band wagon of "war against terrorism." It is a concealment strategy of its cardinal sins against its own citizens.

Is the armed resistance of the Tamils terrorism? Or is it a potent irritant against hegemony?

Even the UN is yet to arrive at a convincing and coherent definition of terrorism. When the Sri Lankan Armed forces kill human rights activists; or when they engage in indiscriminate air raids which claims hundreds of innocent lives of women and children what is often the response of the international community's Silence.

In a politically correct post-modern world why is it that "State terror" is still unacceptable as opposite reality? What gives the state the immunity from crimes against humanity? When a resistance movement engages in an armed struggle (as a measure of counter terror!) against the tyranny and terror of a state why is that only the liberation movement is branded as a terror out-fit? The state terror is given the legitimacy to engage in atrocious illegal actions against its citizens using abominable terror tactics but still it is deemed as righteous force?

We put these above questions in order to provoke re-thinking.

Within the international frame of reference, the definition of a state has to be re-defined. Its actions has to be tested against what is moral and immoral. What is lawful and what is illegitimate. And what are the crimes against humanity and what is deemed to be legitimate force employed by resistance movements.

It is only after working out and arriving at a considered response to such questions can some one advance an intellectually cogent discerning of what is not terrorism but a legitimate armed resistance.

Until such time, the whole-sale tarnishing of the Tamil struggle for liberation as terrorism, particularly by Western nations is tragically ill-liberalism and political opportunism.

Commandos from Kangkai Amaran unit of the Sea Tigers took part in the Sea Tiger mission, the LTTE further said.

The A520 supply ship and troop carrier has been engaged by the Sri Lanka Navy in its attacks against Tiger vessels in 2007.

The ship has lately been engaged in naval service between KKS and Trincomalee by the Sri Lanka Navy.

Sri Lanka pledged when it joined the Human Rights Council in 2006 to implement recommendations from UN bodies. It has notably failed to do so – including through its refusal to confront the problems of torture and enforced disappearances.

The coalition's letter follows concerns expressed last week by a group of leading Sri Lankan NGOs, which urged UN members to "hold the Sri Lankan government accountable for the grave state of human rights abuse in the country" by rejecting its candidacy. The Sri Lankan organizations said that their government has "presided over a grave deterioration of human rights protection" since first winning membership in 2006, and "has used its membership in the Human Rights Council to protect itself from scrutiny."

"The Human Rights Council is meant to uphold human rights, not undermine them," said Steve Crawshaw, UN advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "To elect Sri Lanka would be a travesty, given its appalling rights record over the past two years."