Colombo: Sri Lanka has praised India for its consistent policy on Tamil issue even as it noted that New Delhi had expressed concern on the question of "military solution" to the LTTE problem.

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama, talking to Daily Mirror Newspaper today, said, "they (India) have not expressed any concern on the abrogation (of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) with the LTTE), but on a military solution. On that we see eye to eye." He lauded India for its consistent policy. "We are encouraged by their consistency," he said.

Asked if the Sri Lankan Government was considering a ban on LTTE after doing away with the CFA, the minister said since the country had legislations to tackle the issue there was no immediate proposal to ban the LTTE. "The banning (of LTTE) is a new dimension. It s already a terror organisation and we already have Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) as a legislative arm for us to deal with terrorism," Bogollagama said.

"We have the emergency laws. They (LTTE) are also banned in the countries that matter to us. We have the LTTE where we want them, but in the event that a situation arises in the future we can still look at it. I don't think it's there now, because we have enough other avenues to do that," he said.

"A ban would have to be viewed in the same way as the abrogation of the CFA where a deep wrong was corrected," he added.

Source : PTI