Colombo: Sri Lanka's defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse has called for a ban on the Tamil Tigers and said the ongoing military campaign was aimed at destroying the rebels top leaders, a report said today.

Rajapakse, who is President Mahinda Rajapakse's younger brother, said the military had started a campaign to capture rebel-held areas in the island's north, after securing the east last year.

"We have started our thrust from all sides, from Jaffna, Mannar, Vavuniya and Weli Oya. It is done in a systematic manner. We don t plan to stop," Rajapakse was quoted as saying by the Sinhala-language Lankadeepa newspaper. He said the military was aiming at eliminating Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran and two to three other top leaders.

"If we destroy their leadership, the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) will collapse," the defence secretary said, adding that it was time the government reinstated a ban on the Tigers. The rebels were banned for a period of five years till mid-2003, when the then government moved to re-start peace talks under a 2002-Norwegian brokered truce. The government pulled out of the ceasefire this month, leading to the departure of Nordic monitoring teams.

"They (the LTTE) should be banned. Our aim is to destroy the LTTE," he said. Sri Lankan Army chief Sarath Fonseka also told state television that the issue of whether the Tiger chief was alive or dead was "irrelevant as he is as good as dead". Fonseka said the rebels were not "finished" yet but "weakened".

Source : PTI