Marie Colvin, the first foreign journalist to visit Tamil-held Sri Lanka since 1995, reports from Mallawi

CONCILIATORY words do not come easy to Thamilthevlan, the second in command of the Tamil Tigers. His walking stick is a legacy of the three times he was shot in battle since joining the founding ranks of one of the most ruthless guerrilla movements in the world.

For the first time in 18 years of armed struggle that has cost 60,000 lives, however, he claims the group is now ready to settle for an autonomous homeland rather than continue fighting for an independent state in northern Sri Lanka.

His message, direct from Velupillai Prabhakaran, the reclusive Tamil leader, is far removed from the uncompromising rhetoric long the signature tune of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

“There must be a political solution,” Thamilthevlan told The Sunday Times last week. “The name is immaterial. Federation, confederation, northeast council, autonomous region, we can accept any of these solutions as long as we are guaranteed our equal rights, our dignity and justice. We don’t want a lifestyle decided by Buddhist monks in Colombo.”

The decision does not appear to spring from military weakness. Last April the Tamil Tigers overran a huge Sri Lankan military complex to capture Elephant Pass, the neck of land that controls access to the Jaffna peninsula, their heartland. They swept the army out of Vanni, the four northern Tamil provinces on the mainland, and today control more than 50% of the ancestral land they claim as their own.

Rather, the LTTE decision to enter the diplomatic water appears to come from a realisation that even while they cannot be defeated militarily, neither can they win on the battlefield. They are increasingly isolated and not just politically: the Vanni region is ringed by the army and navy and under an economic siege. Journalists are banned by the Sri Lankan government from entering.

Travelling to Tamil Tiger headquarters in Mallawi was an education in the LTTE networks. I left Vavuniya, the northernmost town controlled by the government, in a car with civilian LTTE sympathisers who held army passes and told me to say that I was going to “Kanthaudaiyarpuvarsankulam” at checkpoints. Fortunately, nobody asked.

Fed by a family of farmers, I slept on the floor of a school near Mannar on the west coast, sitting up late into the night with the principal, hearing how government oppression of the Tamils had turned him from a moderate to a militant. “I don’t want this war,” he said. “But I can’t see any other way to win our rights.”

At dawn, 10 Tamil Tiger fighters arrived dressed in bits of camouflage and flip-flops. All were armed with automatic weapons and grenades. Nobody seemed concerned that we were in government territory.

We rode by tractor through a ruined cashew plantation, until the dirt road became too narrow and the jungle too dense.

The thick foliage overhead turned into a green tunnel; the air was so thick with humidity that my arm felt as if it was furred when I swung it.

Scouts ranged ahead across open fields, checked for Sri Lankan army soldiers, then motioned us in single file across at 10-yard intervals - if one of us were unfortunate enough to step on a mine, at least nobody else would be hurt by the blast.

By sunset another obstacle lay across our path: a river. Following the lead of my Tiger guides, I waded tentatively through the water as the level swiftly rose to my chest.

By 9pm we crossed the main road between army territory and the Tamil Tiger area, and on to the group’s headquarters in Mallawi. The sense of relief was overwhelming.

En route the guerrillas had told me their stories. Most of those in the patrol were village boys and all were from families living as refugees. They are fanatically loyal to Prabhakaran, who they speak of reverentially as “national leader”. He sounds a strict master. Tamil Tigers cannot smoke or drink alcohol and must remain celibate until they are allowed to marry; women at 24, men at 28. They receive no wages.

All Tigers, even those in the political wing, wear cyanide capsules around their necks - they know they will be tortured if captured and are ready to die rather than reveal information. This is not paranoia. The American State Department reported last year that “torture continues with relative impunity”.

Until the 1970s the Tamil protest movement eschewed violence. The LTTE emerged in 1983, when Sinhalese mobs turned on the Tamils, slaughtering hundreds with machetes and burning tyre necklaces and sending thousands fleeing north.

The youth turned to Prabhakaran’s advocacy of armed resistance and secession. The LTTE’s ruthless reputation comes from the Black Tigers, an elite suicide unit. They have bombed government buildings, assassinated a president and killed Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian leader who sent a taskforce to Sri Lanka in 1987.

Although the government claims the Tamil Tigers intimidate civilians, there is evidence of extensive popular support in the areas they control. “The Tamils would be all dead, shot up, without these Tigers,” said Father Xavier, a parish priest. “My parishioners want an end to war, but they say to me, ‘We have lost our lives, our properties, our land, we need a settlement that guarantees us our rights so that we don’t have to go through all this again’.”

The government has alienated Tamil hearts and minds. Ministers in Colombo deny that there is an economic embargo on the Vanni, the Tamil area on the mainland, while checkpoints on the internal border enforce a ban on items ranging from fuel, cement, and plastic sheeting to instant noodles and vegetable oil. Even sanitary towels are not allowed; they can presumably be used to dress wounds.

The Vanni region, which covers 2,000 square miles, has no mains electricity or telephone service; its roads have deteriorated to potholed dirt tracks. Most people travel by bicycle because of the fuel shortage.

The embargo has created a huge but unreported humanitarian disaster for the 500,000 civilians who live here, more than half of them internal refugees. The majority live below the national poverty line of about £12 a month.

Colombo prohibits international aid agencies distributing food. International aid agencies estimate that 40% of the children in the Vanni are undernourished or malnourished.

Pushiparani, a teacher, 52, has been displaced seven times after she fled Jaffna with her six children when the army captured the city five years ago. This is fertile recruiting ground for the Tamil Tigers. One of her sons died in battle and a daughter now serves as a Sea Tiger.

In Killinochchi town, a thriving commercial centre of 300,000 until it was bombarded by the Sri Lankan army in 1996, classes are held in the bombed-out shells of school buildings; hospitals are chronically short of surgical supplies.

“Last week one of my cardiac patients walked into the jungle leaving behind a note that said: ‘I have suffered enough. Suicide’,” one doctor said. “I had no medicine to give him. I feel helpless.”

A unilateral ceasefire de-clared by the Tamil Tigers on Christmas Eve, and renewed every month, is due to expire on April 24. The group said this weekend that the ceasefire would be renewed to give Norwegian mediators more time.