NEW DELHI: Leading Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Members of Parliament (MPs) from Sri Lanka have arrived here for a possible meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the next couple of days.

According to South Block sources, the MPs will also meet National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan.

However, a call on Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran will not be possible since Mr. Saran has already left for New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

Of interest

Given that India has repeatedly stressed its commitment to Sri Lanka's territorial integrity and sovereignty, this visit by TNA members, considered close to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has created considerable interest.

It is for the first time in recent years that New Delhi will directly hear the concerns of the parliamentarians of the TNA, a group known to articulate the concerns of the Tigers.

The team consisting of R. Sampanthan, G.G. Ponnambalam, Mavai Senathirajah, Suresh Premachandran and Selvam Adaikalanathan, has been invited by the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), which is linked to the Ministry of External Affairs.

The Government of India has chosen the ICWA to invite them to steer clear of controversy as the LTTE remains a banned organisation following the 1991 assassination of the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

The message of the MPs, who will speak at a seminar organised by the ICWA on Wednesday, will be closely watched since they are known to be in touch with the LTTE leadership.

`Woo India' campaign

Of late, the LTTE itself has launched a kind of a "woo India" campaign if the remarks made by Tiger ideologue Anton Balasingham on Rajiv Gandhi's assassination are anything to go by. It remains to be seen whether or not the TNA MPs speak in the same vein.

Factions and leaders from the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) and the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) had formed the TNA in 2002.

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