WRAP Tamil Tiger leader gives first presser in 15 years

(10 Apr 2002)

TOKO MATERIAL

Unknown location - 10 April - 2002
1. Wide of Tamil Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, entering news conference
2. Velupillai Prabhakaran sitting down
3. Cutaway journalists
4. SOUNDBITE (Tamil) Velupillai Prabhakaran, Tamil Tiger Leader:
"The right conditions have not arisen for the Tamil Tigers to abandon their target of an independent state. The struggle for Tamil Eelam is not the demand of the Tigers, it is the demand of the people."
5. Wide shot of press conference
6. Pan down from security guard to Prabakharan
7. Cutaway of Australian wife of Anton Balasingham
8. SOUNDBITE: (Tamil) Velupillai Prabhakaran, Tamil Tiger Leader:
" We want the government of India to lift the ban on our organisation when the appropriate time comes we will raise the issue with the government of India."
9. Cutaway press
10. SOUNDBITE: (Tamil) Velupillai Prabhakaran, Tamil Tiger Leader:
" Since we adopted the peace process and we are now committed to peace I don't want to make any comments about the suicide attacks at this stage."

Killimanochie - 9 April 2002
7. Pan up form soldiers boots to faces of female Tamil Tigers
8. Close up faces
9. Tamil soldiers marching
10. Tamil Tiger with Machine gun
11. Tamils with RPG, mortars and other infantry weapons

Unknown location - 10 April 2002
12. SOUNDBITE: (Tamil) Velupillai Prabhakaran, Tamil Tiger Leader:
" The accusations that we used child soldiers is completely unacceptable, we no longer recruit child soldiers. Recently we have decided to recruit as per UN resolutions only those over age 18."

Killimanochie 9 April 2002
13. Various of mine clearance operations, Tamils clearing mines form fields with primitive tools
14. Man reading newspaper in front of shop
15. Various of children

Unknown location - 10 April 2002
16. SOUNDBITE: (Tamil) Velupillai Prabhakaran, Tamil Tiger Leader:
"We are sincerely and seriously committed to peace and its because we are serious that we have declared a unilateral cessation of hostilities which has continued for the past 4 months. That shows our commitment to peace."
17. Various Tamil Tigers cemetery

STORYLINE:

The Tamil Tiger leader, who has led an 18-year separatist war in Sri Lanka, told his first news conference in 15 years that he believes a Norwegian-mediated peace process will succeed.

"With the mediation help by the Norwegian government, I believe this process will succeed this time," Velupillai Prabhakaran, founder and sole leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, said Wednesday.

Nevertheless, Prabhakaran said, there will be no talks until the government lifts a ban on his group, which has been declared a terrorist organization in six countries including the United States.

He also said that the conditions were not yet right for giving up his fight for an independent Tamil state.

Prabhakaran, addressing reporters in a secret location near Kilinochchi, about 435 kilometers (250 miles) north of the capital of Colombo, said the struggle for political independence was the demand of the Tamil people.

Local and foreign journalists were escorted to the site of the news conference after elaborate security measures.

The 47-year-old Prabhakaran, considered a terrorist by the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, India and Sri Lanka, has been rarely seen in public.

His followers have included suicide bombers responsible for the assassinations of several leaders, including former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in May 1991, and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, in May 1993.




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