Sri Lanka's elusive Tamil Tiger supremo marks his 52nd birthday

COLOMBO (AFP) - Sri Lanka's elusive Tamil Tiger supremo marks his 52nd birthday on Sunday with a self-imposed deadline to decide the course of Asia's longest-running ethnic conflict.

Velupillai Prabhakaran has no official birthday celebrations but his annual speech on Monday will be keenly watched by Sri Lankan leaders as well as those in foreign capitals struggling to broker peace.

"There are no official functions or celebrations," said Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Illanthiriyan. "But many people usually have religious observances or share sweets to mark the occasion."

Born on November 26, 1954 in the island's arid north, Prabhakaran, a school drop-out, has built what is regarded the world's deadliest guerrilla outfit. He commands a squad of suicide bombers who have even inspired Al-Qaeda.

Prabhakaran's birthday coincides with the "Heroes Week" of his Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which honors the 18,500-plus men and women who have died fighting for a separate state called Eelam.

The celebrations mark the anniversary on November 27, a day after Prabhakaran's birthday, of the death of the first Tiger guerrilla -- shot dead by security forces in 1982.

This year's Heroes Week has added significance because of the escalating violence that has killed at least 3,422 people by official count in the past year.

Prabhakaran in his message last year put the government on notice to come up with a reasonable political solution.

"This is our urgent and final appeal," Prabhakaran said last year. "If the new government rejects our urgent appeal, we will, next year... establish self-government in our homeland."

Former Tamil rebel, Dharmalingam Sithadthan, said Prabhakaran's own deadline would come to end on Monday and he would face a credibility problem unless he took a tough stance -- either for war or peace -- in his speech.

"He will now have to say what he proposes to do next," Sithadthan said. That is also what the government and Sri Lanka's international backers are keen to know. A truce arranged by Norway in 2002 is holding only on paper.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse, currently visiting India, recalled Friday that Prabhakaran had last year described him as a "practical leader" and hoped that the guerrilla chief would agree to resume negotiations with him.

"I am in the process of evolving a political package. I am sure we can discuss it with the Tigers," President Rajapakse told AFP before he left for India. "Let us see what he has to say in his speech."

Prabhakaran, a father of three children, is believed to be somewhere in the island's embattled north where the Tigers control territory and have been able to keep security forces at bay.

His main success has been his band of suicide bombers known as "Black Tigers" and the deadly Sea Tigers, a de facto naval unit that is a rarity among guerrilla outfits.

The youngest of four children from a middle-class family in the Jaffna peninsula, the cultural capital of minority Tamils, and nicknamed "Thamby", or younger brother, he went underground in 1972.

At the time he longed to own a revolver, even a rusted one, according to an official biography.

He came to international notice in 1987 by organizing lethally effective hit-and-run attacks on Indian troops sent to Sri Lanka to help quell the Tamil rebellion and end separatism on this island of 19.5 million people.

His victims include former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi, who had authorized the Indian troop deployment and was assassinated in May 1991, and Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa, blown up in May 1993.

He now faces increasing international isolation. The United States declared his outfit a foreign terrorist group in 1997, five years after India slapped a ban on it. The European Union was the latest to issue a ban, in May.

However, although his detractors see him as a megalomaniac and a cold-blooded murderer, among his followers Prabhakaran is regarded a "sun god".

His military strength is challenged by a renegade field commander known as Karuna, but Prabhakaran now wields more direct political clout than ever.

He backed a moderate Tamil party in April 2004 elections and the 22 legislators from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) are regarded as Tiger proxies.

The TNA is the third largest group in the 225-member assembly and their votes would be crucial for any political deal to end separatist violence, which has already claimed more than 60,000 lives since the birth of the Tigers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061126/wl_as...restprabhakaran