Several suspicious looking persons had been sighted loitering around the home of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar a few days before his assassination, but security officials did not act decisively to protect him, police sources said.

A few weeks previously, two men had even been taken into custody while videotaping the Minister's Buller's Lane residence, but security officials still did not take action to protect him, sources said.

The manner in which Kadirgamar was killed was a disgrace to any security operation. The Foreign Minister was shot by a gunman in a neighboring house with a high-powered specialized sniper rifle, presumably with an infra-red night vision telescopic sight. Incredibly, the gunman escaped from the scene.

The use of a sniper rifle also clearly indicates that the killing was the work of the LTTE. The Tigers have not claimed responsibility, which is normal, since they never claim responsibility for any attack outside the main battlefields of the Northeast.

Kadirgamar was supposed to be one of the most closely guarded persons in the country. Indeed, he was supposed to have more security than almost every other Minister. Only the President, Prime Minister, the Deputy Minister of Defence, and the three armed forces chiefs have more security.

It is the most elementary point of VIP security that the residence of the person being protected be secure. But in this case there was clearly a glaring breakdown. The LTTE was given the opportunity of entering a neighbor's house, setting up a rifle and tripod, waiting for the Minister to come out and take a swim in the pool, and shot him several times. The Ministerial Security Division personnel guarding Kadirgamar had no clue where the shots came from, and did not return fire. Hence the assassin, or assassins, was able to walk off, with the rifle no less, which cannot be termed a hasty exit by any means.

The fact that the assassin had enough time to set up a tripod for the rifle speaks volumes of the debacle in security. LTTE assassins have never been known to have used tripods before. A tripod would give a shooter a very stable gun platform indeed, rather than holding the gun in his hands where it would move around with the movements of the assassin's body. However, it is not used in situations where the shooter would have to move fast, for example if he came under fir e himself. But here the assassin knew that he would have a vantage point from which he could use a tripod undetected and undisturbed.

Assassins skilled in the use of sniper rifles and night vision equipment are very rare, especially in this country. Indeed, the LTTE has not been known to use them before, but has clearly trained a few of its Pistol Group assassins in this method. The only others capable of using such precision weapons are the few specialized marksmen in the forces and police, and members of the handful of sports shooting clubs in the country.

The fact that the LTTE knew that they needed a rifle-wielding marksman, speaks volumes of the intricate planning that would have gone into the assassination. In fact, it is quite likely that the marksman was brought in from the Northeast for this very killing, as he or she may not have been in Colombo before.

Kadirgamar had been a longtime target of the LTTE. He first became a target high on the list of the LTTE in April 1995, with the resumption of hostilities. Military Intelligence warned repeatedly that he was second only to the President on the list of LTTE targets. Unlike most members of the Cabinet, he did considerable damage to the LTTE's reputation, rallying international support for Sri Lanka's fight with the separatists. He was instrumental in having the LTTE banned in the United States.

The killing of senior politicians such as Minister of Industries C. V. Gooneratne, UNP Presidential Candidate Gamini Dissanayake, and others in the mid nineties, brought home the fact that the Tigers would target any senior political leader, and Kadirgamar was well aware that he was a target. Yet, he never shied away from doing his duty as Foreign Minister, a large part of which was to take on the LTTE and give a clear picture to the world of its true nature.

Neither did he shy away from his many public activities. On the night of his assassination, he had just returned from the nearby BMICH where he had participated in the launch of a publication on the art of Stanley Kirinde at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS), the first copy of which he presented to Indian High Commissioner Mrs. Nirupama Rao. He also clicked a mouse and officially launched the BCIS website.

In recent weeks, he again spoke out against the LTTE very publicly, and the LTTE's attention was drawn to him again.

In most other countries, such an assassination would bring about the immediate resignation or sacking of the police chief. But neither IGP Chandra Fernando nor the head of the Ministerial Security Division look as if they are budging. IGP Fernando is of course basking in the glow of the much publicized commendation by the President a few weeks ago for supposedly bringing about law and order to the country! Since then of course, his dubious reputation has been badly dented by embarrassing incidents such as Deputy Minister Mervyn Silva's son's alleged assault of police narcotics bureau officers who were on a raid, the hijacking of the Indian Deputy High Commissioner's vehicle which has vanished without a trace, and now the death of the Foreign Minister.

The LTTE has stepped up its attacks throughout the country in recent weeks. On the same day as the Foreign Minister was killed, LTTE Pistol Group gunmen killed Sinnadurai Selvarajah, a member of PLOTE, and his wife Relangi Selvarajah, a Senior Announcer at the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation and well-known actress of the seventies. They were killed by two gunmen inside a communication centre they owned on St. Peter's Lane in Bambalapitiya, when the rest of their staff had gone out for lunch.

The LTTE has been systematically gunning down members of other Tamil political groups, especially PLOTE and EPDP, during the ceasefire.

The same day the Tigers attacked a police patrol near Dehiattakandiya in the Anuradhapura district, killing a sergeant and injuring a home guard. On the same day, another attack by LTTE Pistol Group gunmen in Karaitivu in the Ampara district wounded a constable.

Belatedly, the President ordered a State of Emergency, and the armed forces and police moved to set up roadblocks and search neighborhoods for LTTE spies, suicide bombers and assassins. They may be successful. But chances are that the assassins are long gone. The time to catch LTTE cadres in Colombo is before they strike, not afterwards. Perhaps the top brass should have heeded this column's advice immediate after the assassination of Lieutenant Colonel T. M. Muthalif, the second in command of Army Intelligence, when we said:

"In fact, the government and the top brass of the armed forces are assisting the LTTE campaign through their inaction, by not using tried and true methods that would stop the Tigers' campaign in its tracks in no time."

"These methods are namely the use of neighborhood searches by large numbers of army and police personnel, which would serve to detect suspected LTTE cadres who have arrived in Colombo during the ceasefire; and the use of roadblocks, both temporary and permanent ones, to discourage LTTE cadres from traveling around the city at will to conduct intelligence gathering work, and to put a stop to cadres carrying weapons and bombs which could be discovered at checkpoints."

"President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga's military advisors never seem to learn the lessons of history, even their own history. An identical situation prevailed during the short ceasefire of 1995, with the LTTE pouring intelligence wing cadres and Black Tiger Suicide Bombers into Colombo. The only difference is that they did not strike until after hostilities had officially resumed in April 1995. Then, over the next 18 months, they turned Colombo into something between Kabul and Beirut, exploding bombs and devastating key areas of the city, striking fear into government leaders and the public, disrupting military operations in the Northeast by striking at the armed forces' leadership in Colombo, and stifling the nation's economy."

"The armed forces' answer lay in checkpoints and neighborhood searches. Over the months, tens of thousands of houses were searched, and the identities of millions of people in houses and on the roads were checked. This huge effort resulted in the arrests of dozens of LTTE cadres, the discovery of huge amounts of weapons and explosives, and the ultimate stifling of LTTE operations in Colombo to a trickle. Certainly, it took time for it to work, and it never succeeded in making the city 100% safe. But it was the best answer that anyone had to a seemingly insurmountable problem."

"What is absolutely incredible is that the armed forces currently have about 100,000 personnel who could be used for mass searches of Colombo, unlike in 1995 and 1996. At that time, there were only a few thousand personnel available in the city, since most of the Army's available strength had been thrown into the Northeast in an all-out effort to stop the LTTE. Yet today, Sri Lanka's soldiers sit in their barracks and watch television footage of the murder of key colleagues such as Lt. Col. Muthaliff."