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1,387 child soldiers with LTTE: UNICEF

B. Muralidhar Reddy

COLOMBO: The UNICEF has handed over to the LTTE a list of 1,387 child soldiers on the rolls of the Tigers and urged it to stop recruiting underage fighters and release those who are already enlisted.

The U.N. children's agency on Friday had said it had met representatives of the Tamil Tigers and handed over the list. An official said UNICEF was mandated to verify and monitor underage recruitment cases reported to the agency mainly by the families.

Acknowledging the list provided by the UNICEF, the LTTE however complained that there were "several sources of errors" in it. "Firstly, many youths in the list are well above the age of 18. Secondly, of these 1387 names, 53 are known to have been released, although UNICEF has not removed them from their list... ..LTTE believes that many names in the UNICEF list are outdated. Many names could have entered the UNICEF list, for instance, without the youth ever formally joining the LTTE," a statement put out by the Tigers Peace Secretariat said.

The rebel group said children affected by war in the Northeast cry out for help by joining the LTTE. It said children prefer the Tamil Tigers to the UNICEF because the later "does not take on resource intensive responsibilities like that of caring for children at risk."

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