Balasingham`s funeral to be held next week

[bemildred]

London, Dec 15: The funeral of Anton Balasingham, the chief strategist and negotiator of the Tamil Tigers, will be held here sometime next week.

Sixtyeight-year old Balasingham, the ideologist of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, died after battling diabetes and cancer at his residence in South London yesterday.

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"He was the brains behind the brawn, someone the leadership could turn to for ideological guidance, philosophical justification and political explanation while the killing went on," the Daily observed.

A forlorn-faced man, ill with a transplanted kidney, he travelled to devastated northern Sri Lanka in 2002 to act as the rebels` negotiator in peace talks brokered by Norway. The Tigers vainly asked India to host the encounter so that Balasingham could be near a hospital in case of an emergency. Everybody feared that he would die before the best chance of peace in more than two decades could be seized, the newspaper said.

Zeenews