New Delhi: Britain's Special Air Service officers were training Sri Lankan military during the separatist Tamil Elam movement in 1980s, documents declassified in the UK reveal. .
The documents show former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi asking her British counterpart, Margaret Thatcher to stop helping Sri Lankan military in order to crush the LTTE.
Indira Gandhi had asked Thatcher to persuade the then Sri Lankan President (J R) Jayewardene, to cooperate for not seeking military support from Britain and make suggestions in this regard at the All Parties Conference.
“Military aid and anti-insurgency assistance are not enough to overcome a political crisis which has to be faced and resolved,” wrote Indira Gandhi in a letter to Margaret Thatcher.
The Sri Lankan government under President J R Jayewardene was then tackling the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) forces and other groups in the north and east of the island nation.
