LTTE can't be bought over with money: Rajapaksa's advisor
Basil Rajapaksa makes the statement while reacting to the charge that he had funded LTTE to make it support his brother in '05 presidential elections, reports PK Balachandran.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who are fighting for an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka, cannot be bought over with money, says Basil Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's brother, Political Advisor and MP.
"We will only fool ourselves if we underestimate the LTTE. If we say that the LTTE can be bought over with money, then we are fooling ourselves. We are not fools to do such a thing," Basil Rajapaksa told Sunday's edition of The Nation .
He was reacting to the charge that he had personally arranged to give SLRs 200 million to the LTTE to make it support his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa in the Presidential elections in December 2005.
"Unofficially we have never met the LTTE.And personally, I have not met the Tigers.And also no money was offered," he said.
Despite denials in parliament, a breakaway group of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), led by former Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, has been consistently maintaining that Rajapaksa had given SLRs 200 million to the LTTE.