The four-day visit by Sri Lanka's Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Rohan D'Silva Daluvatte, to several southern Indian military bases has fuelled speculation that New Delhi is ready to offer help to the beleaguered Sri Lankan army fighting Tamil Tiger rebels.
Gen Daluvatte's stopovers in Chinnai (formerly Madras) and nearby Bangalore coincides with claims by the Tamil Tigers of inflicting heavy damage on government troops, killing at least 100 soldiers and capturing a key army complex barely three miles from Jaffna, their political and cultural capital. Gen Daluvatte returns home at the weekend.
Official sources said both sides touched on the possibility of the Indian navy offering logistic support to Sri Lankan troops trapped on the Jaffna peninsula, which the rebels have vowed to recapture.
Last week, India conducted "limited" naval manoeuvres off its eastern coast in the Bay of Bengal close to the Sri Lankan coastline. Although officials said the exercises which included a destroyer, several corvettes and offshore patrol vessels were "routine", naval sources said the manoeuvres were meant to increase surveillance in the area. The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, Mr Lakshman Kadirgamar, earlier this week said that Delhi and Colombo were discussing the possibility of jointly patrolling the seas around the north and east of the island to prevent the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from bringing arms in by sea. India has refused military aid to Colombo and declined to send an expeditionary force, as it did in 1987, to fight the Tamil rebels, agreeing only to provide unspecified humanitarian assistance.
But security officials said India could ignore events in Sri Lanka at its peril. They said Delhi would, in some manner or form, be involved with the military crisis over Jaffna. "A subtle naval blockade around Jaffna appears to be the most obvious tactic," an official said. Delhi was also concerned about potential trouble if the Tigers were successful in carving out a Tamil homeland north and east of Sri Lanka. This is now a strong possibility, given their military successes and determination, and the lack of motivation and fighting spirit among government troops.
This would impinge negatively on India's 60 million strong Tamil community in Tamil Nadu state, less than 10 miles across the waters from Sri Lanka. Indian Tamilians had strong ethnic ties with Sri Lankan Tamils, which security officials fear might eventually lead to LTTE interference on the Indian mainland with the aim of expanding its influence. India was also concerned over control of Trincomalee port in eastern Sri Lanka, close to the Tamil Nadu coastline which fell within the declared limits of the Tigers' homeland. Trincomalee is one the world's biggest natural deep sea harbours which "controls" the Indian Ocean.
Through a combination of diplomacy and astute bargaining India had, over the years, managed to prevent outside powers from having access to Trincomalee. In the 1987 bilateral accord which led to the Indian expeditionary force landing in Sri Lanka to fight the Tigers, one of its key clauses declared that Trincomalee would not be controlled by any foreign power "inimical" to India.
With the Chinese and Pakistanis rushing defence equipment to Colombo, Delhi's concerns over whether access to Trincomalee would be the pay-off for their assistance have increased, and is likely to result in some direct assistance from India to Sri Lanka.
Reuters adds: Tamil Tiger rebels said yesterday they had overrun a key army complex and again fired shells at an air base which provides a lifeline for some 30,000 troops on the wartorn Jaffna peninsula.
While fighting raged in the north of the country, the government said it feared an "ethnic backlash" by Sinhala extremists against the minority Tamil community in the south after a bomb blast killed at least 22 people and injured dozens more.