Making his annual speech minutes after the air raid on the LTTE’s radio station, the Voice of Tigers, in the rebel-held heartland of Kilinochchi, Prabhakaran, who turned 53 on Monday said that failure by the powerful international community “to condemn unambiguously the military path of the current regime has created the present situation” in the island nation.

The rebels said that supersonic war planes of the Sri Lankan Air Force dropped at least 12 bombs on the radio station killing nine people and flattening the building complex.

“This partisan and unjust conduct of the international community has severely undermined the confidence our people had in them. And it has paved the way for the breakdown of the ceasefire and the peace efforts,” Prabhakaran said.

“Furthermore, the generous military and economic aid they have given to the Sinhala State and their diplomatic efforts to prop up the chauvinistic Sinhala State has encouraged the Sinhala nation further and further along its militaristic path,” the Tiger chief said.

On the Indian intervention in the ethnic conflict in the 80s, he charged that “India signed an accord with the Sinhala State without the consent of the Tamils” and “then attempted to force an ineffectual solution on our people”.

“However, even this ill-considered solution, which did not even address the basic national aspirations of the Tamils, was blocked by the chauvinistic Sinhala State,” the rebel chief has said accusing that “the international community is making the same mistake that India made many years ago”.

In his speech he also appealed to the international community to change their approach and expressed hopes that they “will cease giving military and economic aid to the Sinhala regime and accept the right to self determination and the sovereignty of the Tamil nation”.

He said that the ruling coalition of President Mahinda Rajapaksa is “overconfident of its military victory” and has “shut fast the door for peace”.

“The Rajapaksa regime is never going to realize that the Tamil national question cannot be resolved by military oppression. The Sinhala leadership is not going to shed its desire for military supremacy or the Sinhalisation of the Tamil homeland,” the Tiger chief said.

Describing the defeat to the outfit in the East as a “strategic withdrawal”, he said that “the Sinhala military has fallen yet again into the net we spread and it is now forced to commit large numbers of troops to rule land without people”.

“Caught in a territorial trap, it will soon be forced to face the serious consequences of its misguided ambitions,” Prabhakaran said.

“Thousands of our fighters are standing ready to fight with determination for our just goal of freedom and we will overcome the hurdles before us and liberate our motherland,” Prabhakaran said, vowing to carry on the “struggle until it is achieved”.

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