The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MPs are expected to call on an array of political leaders here, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi, said P. Nedumaran, speaking from Chennai.

"This visit will mark an important change for India's policy towards Sri Lanka," Nedumaran, one of the most loyal supporters in this country of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), told sources over the phone.

There was no official word here if the MPs would meet the prime minister. A source said that no meeting had been scheduled for Thursday with Gandhi either.

The five MPs are R. Sampanthan, Mavai S. Senathirajah, Selvam Adailakanathan, K. Premachandan and Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam. They flew in from Chennai, where on Wednesday they met Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.

It was the first meeting between the pro-LTTE TNA and Karunanidhi since the latter took power in Tamil Nadu in May.

The visit comes exactly three months after the MPs camped inNew Delhi to meet Manmohan Singh but failed to do so. At that time the senior most Indian official they met was National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan.

"The situation then was different, the situation now is different," said Nedumaran, who has stood by the LTTE in Tamil Nadu from the early 1980s when few even in Sri Lanka knew who the ultra-secretive Tigers were. The LTTE is now outlawed in India.

Nedumaran referred to a recent letter Sonia Gandhi wrote to Karunanidhi stating that India would offer no military assistance to Sri Lanka and that it stood for a negotiated end to the ethnic conflict in the island.

"These will be the parameters of India's policy towards Sri Lanka in the future," Nedumaran said.

"The TNA MPs are visiting Delhi under the new circumstances, in the light of new developments. Their aim is to meet the prime minister and Sonia Gandhi. I cannot say with certainty the meetings will come through," he said.

But other sources said that with Karunanidhi, whose DMK is a key member of India's ruling coalition, taking an active interest in the TNA visit, the appointments would come through.

Nedumaran said the TNA MPs also desired to meet other Indian political leaders.

The TNA MPs' second trip to New Delhi in three months comes amid galloping violence in Sri Lanka that has all but formally killed the Norway-brokered peace process and claimed over 3,000 lives this year.

There is a growing feeling here that repeated Indian requests to Sri Lanka not to target innocent Tamil civilians and to work sincerely towards a negotiated settlement are being contemptuously ignored.

Both Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi met Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse when he visited India last month and repeated their concerns over human suffering in the island, which is separated from Tamil Nadu by a narrow strip of sea.

There have also been calls for India to play a more active role in Sri Lanka instead of watching helplessly as the situation deteriorates. Some Western countries have concluded that India is the best bet in Sri Lanka in the present circumstances.

And there is mounting anger in Tamil Nadu that the Sri Lankan military is getting away by killing innocent Tamils in the name of fighting the LTTE. One of those who have spoken out publicly against this is the Tamil Nadu chief minister's daughter Kanimozhi.