International

Former top General Sarath Fonseka, who led the army to victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has now become a pawn in the hands of some western nations "conspiring" to bring "regime change" in Sri Lanka, a top minister has alleged.

The general secretary of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and agriculture development minister Maithripala Sirisena also alleged that many of the foreign dignitaries who visited Sri Lanka during the last phase of the Eelam War IV tried to save the slain LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.

"Certain Western nations were trying to bring about a regime change here since the government have never given into their pressure in its fight against terrorism," the Daily Mirror newspaper quoted Sirisena as saying.

He described Fonseka as a brave military leader. "We recognise it. We regret the fact that he has become a pawn of this Western conspiracy against the government,"he said.

Many foreign dignitaries who visited Sri Lanka during the last leg of the nearly 30-year-old war were interested in salvaging Prabhakaran through the cessation of humanitarian operations, the senior minister said. There was pressure applied by them to save the LTTE supremo. "Almost all of them wanted to save the life of Prabhakaran by applying pressure on the government to stop military operations," the paper quoted Sirisena yesterday.

"There must be an invisible foreign force behind the UNP-JVP combine to defeat this government,"Sirisena told reporters.

Commenting on the presidential election, he said that the government had started electioneering successfully all over the country.

"In the campaign, we are ahead of the Opposition. We are working for a historic victory for pPresident Mahinda Rajapaksa," he said.