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By Our Defence Correspondent

The censor yesterday blue-pencilled the headline and most of the two introductory paragraphs of this Defence column. Additionally another complete paragraph was totally deleted. We publish our original report as Censored.

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according to sources in the Ministry of Defence.

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This is highly embarrassing for the government, which has sought to place the blame everywhere but on itself.

President Kumaratunga said during her election campaign that the debacle was caused by several senior officers and the United National Party, which she said plotted together to incite troops to run away, in order to embarrass the government, and make voters disillusioned. She cited two army officers by name at election rallies.

The 300-page report was handed over to the Commander of the Army Lieutenant General Sirilal Weerasooriya, three weeks ago. Copies of it have been provided to President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Deputy Defence Minister Anuruddha Ratwatte.

The Court of Inquiry was appointed by the president, within days of the Wanni debacle, and contained the second most senior officers of the army, navy and air force. It was headed by Army Chief of Staff Major General Lionel Balagalle, with Air Force Chief of Staff Air Vice Marshal Donald Perera, and Navy Chief of Staff Rear Admiral Daya Sandagiri, as members. The Wanni area was defended mainly by units of the army, but contained large contingents of air force and naval troops.

The report has put the army in a quandary over the fate of two senior officers who were suspended over the Wanni debacle. The Wanni’s two main commanders, Maj. Gen. Gamini Gunasekera and Brigadier T. M. Bohoran, were removed from their posts and sent on compulsory leave. They have not yet been reinstated. Nor have they been charged with any offence.

If the report is made public, or is distributed within the army, the two officers could use it as crucial evidence to take legal action against the army and the defence ministry, over their plight. They could also sue government newspapers and TV stations that carried defamatory remarks against them by PA politicians.

The army has traditionally refused to release reports on debacles, and the government has not tabled such reports in parliament, despite repeated requests from the opposition. However, the reports have been used by the deputy defence minister as reference when answering questions in the house on the debacles. Reports on previous debacles received similar treatment, including those on Pooneryn, Kilinochchi, and Mullaittivu.

If the report is ever released, it will only be after the next General Election, so that the PA campaign will not he harmed, sources said. The election is due by August of this year.

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The Wanni operations have been the main war strategy of the government since the Jaffna Peninsula was captured in 1995 and 1996.

Two other parallel inquiries into the Wanni debacle have not yet been completed.

One is the report of Maj. Gen. A. K. Sooriyabandara, who has the job of compiling a list of equipment, weapons, ammunition and vehicles, lost in the Wanni debacle.

The other is a highly unusual investigation by the Criminal Investigations Department, launched on the order of the president, on whether there was a criminal conspiracy between officers in the army and the UNP.

The CID has already questioned a large number of military officers in the Wanni, and even grilled former army Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Lucky Algama, only days before he was killed by an LTTE Black Tiger suicide bomber at a UNP rally in Ja-Ela. Maj. Gen. Algama had made a private visit to the Wanni a few weeks before the debacle.

Meanwhile, the army took a group of journalists to Elephant Pass this week, as the LTTE’s attacks on that camp trailed off.

The Tigers began attacks on the string of major camps in the Elephant Pass-Vettilaikerni-Kaddaikadu-Paranthan sector on December 11. The heaviest assaults came on December 17, just a few day before the presidential election, and were clearly intended to embarrass the PA campaign by capturing the vital camps. The area is defended by the army’s 54th Division.

However, the attacks on the highly fortified area proved unsuccessful, mostly due to the fact that the army rushed in an entire division of troops, the 53rd Division, from the Wanni region, which effectively doubled the number of troops in the Elephant Pass area.

The camps are also well fortified with proper defences,

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Since then situation has stabilized, although the Tigers make frequent sorties into the area and launch small attacks.

Meanwhile, the army is trying to recruit a further 15,000 men to boost its strength. This comes in the wake of President Kumaratunga’s victory in the election, which ensured that the war would continue by military means, as LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran has rejected her calls for peace talks, over the last year and a half.

With the Northeast Monsoon beginning to die down, and making conditions for fighting more suitable, a fresh round of attacks by both sides is expected.

Meanwhile, the CID team investigating Monday’s letter bomb attack at the presidential secretariat is focussing on the possibility that the attack was not by the LTTE, but by some other group.

Several postal workers have already been taken into custody and grilled over how the parcel was sent to the secretariat.

The president rarely visits her office, and was not there at the time the parcel arrived. It was detected before being opened, and the Army’s Bomb Disposal Unit was summoned and blew it up at Galle Face Green.

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