LTTE's international presence largely intact: Sri Lanka

Though the LTTE has been militarily defeated, its international organisation remains largely intact to this day, Sri Lanka's powerful Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said today.

"A significant component of that network was its propaganda arm. This continues to work actively, though often in disguise, to promote the separatist cause and discredit the Government of Sri Lanka," he said while releasing a defense ministry report here.

Gotabhaya Rajapaksa also accused the defeated LTTE and members of a strong Tamil expatriate community of spreading allegations to defame the nation and its armed forces.

"This (LTTE) network has funds at its disposal, and pushes its agenda through influential international figures and misled media outlets, which continue to accept and even promote this propaganda with very little objective examination," said Gotabhaya, also a brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The report "Humanitarian Operation: Factual Analysis", analyses the events of the decades-long civil war and denies allegations of human rights violations by Sri Lankan troops.

The LTTE waged a bloody three-decade civil war for a separate state for the Tamils of Sri Lanka, alleging discrimination against the minority community at the hands of the majority Sinhalas.

But the Lankan military crushed the LTTE by killing its supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran in May 2009. The ethnic conflict left between 80,000 and 100,000 people dead.