Norwegian group says Oslo funding terrorism here

The Norwegians Against Terrorism (NAT) organisation has accused the Norwegian Government of funding the LTTE through payments made by the Norwegian Government agency Norad as well as by providing the LTTE with training.

In a report released in January this year, a detailed list of Sri Lankan recipients of funds from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry for 2005 is provided and some of the beneficiaries of the funding include the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), the LTTE peace secretariat as well as several NGOs which are seen as pro-LTTE.

According to the report the TRO received US $ 2.3 million (around Rs 239 million) while the LTTE peace secretariat received US $ 900,000 (around Rs 90 million) in 2005.

The report said the payments to Sri Lanka had been deleted from the unrestricted payment list of Norad, but it quoted sources in Norad as saying that payments to the LTTE was not only continuing but increasing.

The report cited two examples in which the Norwegians provided training to the LTTE.

One was a visit to a special forces training camp in Rena where the LTTE received instructions on weapons, tactics and military strategy and the other was where the Norwegian special forces trained the Sea Tigers in underwater demolition in the Trang province in Thailand, as exposed in a Canadian intelligence report.

NAT said it would continue to expose dubious dealings between the LTTE and Norway in the future after going through the several aid projects that are ear marked for 2007 and would continue to collect evidence for a future class action lawsuit to be filed against Norway for funding LTTE terrorism.