Colombo: Warning that the LTTE was trying to regroup under a new leader, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake said on Thursday that any plot to create law and order problems in the country will be dealt with firmly.
Without naming LTTE's new leader Selvarasa Pathmanathan directly, Wickremanayake told Parliament that "another person was trying to mobilise the LTTE cadres to regroup" and that it would be dealt firmly.
Vowing to pursue its campaign for "Tamil Eelam", the LTTE last month named alleged arms smuggler Pathmanathan alias KP as its new leader to succeed the slain tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran who was killed in May.
The announcement came amid reports that differences have cropped up among the few remaining LTTE leaders who are based abroad. It was also not clear whether the huge Tamil diaspora will back 54-year-old Pathmanathan.
Wickremanayake pledged to root out any remnants of tiger rebel militancy after the defeat of the LTTE.
"We will eradicate the germs that may still be there from the decades of LTTE terrorism", the Sri Lankan Prime Minister said, adding, there could still be some "remnant germs" of the militancy that had plagued the country for nearly three decades.
"We will finish these remaining germs", he said, adding that the authorities had received information from the Vavuniya camp housing over 2.6 lakh Tamil IDPs that the LTTE cadres were trying to regroup.