Two ships full of US Marines and heavy equipment steaming toward Sri Lanka were diverted due to reduced need for aid, officials said, and instead bolstered the US task force off western Sumatra, the area hardest-hit by last week’s tsunami. But the highly sensitive nature of the US relief mission in southern Asia was highlighted when a spokesman for Sri Lanka’s rebels, the Tamil Tigers – considered a terrorist organisation by Washington – said that the troops were being sent as spies to help put down their insurgency. A Tamil rebel leader claimed that the US troops, and those from India, being sent to help in the relief effort, might use the operation as a cover to spy on the rebels. “The attempt by the American and Indian troops to land in Sri Lanka … is totally based on their political and military interests,” Nallathamby Srikantha told Voice of Tigers radio, the official rebel mouthpiece. “They may try to collect details to help the government crush the Tamil national struggle in a future conflict,” Srikantha said. Full Story
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