COLOMBO: Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was killed by a sniper late on Friday, was a hardliner who helped outlaw Tamil Tiger rebels internationally and was long seen as a prime target.

Kadirgamar, 73, was an ethnic Tamil who was a top adviser to President Chandrika Kumaratunga in a protracted effort to bring about a permanent peace with the Tigers, whose two-decade war for a separate state is in limbo thanks to a 2002 ceasefire.

He was believed to have been shot twice in the head, once in the throat and once in the body by a sniper in a neighbouring property while he was in the garden of his upscale, heavily guarded Colombo home, and died in the National Hospital.

Police said they suspected the Tigers, but gave no proof. Spokesmen for the rebels were not available for comment.

Kadirgamar was one of country’s highest-profile politicians, and as foreign minister for seven years until 2001 he internationally highlighted acts of terror carried out by the Tamil Tigers in war for a homeland for minority ethnic Tamils.

He was instrumental in getting the Tigers outlawed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and Britain.

Kumaratunga, who appointed Kadirgamar as foreign minister again in April 2004 when her party won parliamentary elections, paid tribute to “a hero of our times” and declared a period of national mourning.

“He waged a relentless struggle against terrorism in all its forms, despite continuous threats to his life,” Kumaratunga’s office said in a statement that stopped short of accusing the Tigers for his killing.

Kadirgamar was one of the president’s main advisers on the civil war, but he and Kumaratunga were unable to bring the rebels to the negotiating table.

After a change in government in late 2001, the rebels signed a ceasefire agreement with then-Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in early 2002, but face-to-face peace talks conducted with Norwegian mediation broke down in 2003 and Wickremesinghe lost a snap election in 2004.

The island’s peace process has been deadlocked ever since, and Kadirgamar’s killing comes amid escalating tensions between the government and the rebels.

Kadirgamar grew up in the historic town of Kandy in Sri Lanka’s central hills, and was an Oxford-educated lawyer who specialised in international and intellectual property law before turning to politics.

An eloquent orator, Kadirgamar was close to the media and often visited other countries, including India, in his efforts to campaign against the Tigers, but officials said that made him a prime target.

“Because he is a Tamil and doing that, he is considered one of the biggest enemies of the Tigers,” an official in Kumaratunga’s office said in 2003 about Kadirgamar.

The Tigers have carried out numerous suicide attacks on Sri Lankan officials, and seriously wounded Kumaratunga in an assassination bid in 1999, who lost an eye.

They also killed Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993, two years after a Tiger suicide bomber murdered former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 for sending troops to Sri Lanka to try to enforce a ceasefire pact.

Kadirgamar was a candidate in 2003 for the position of secretary general of the Commonwealth, the organisation of mainly former British colonies, but was defeated by Don McKinnon of New Zealand.

Kadirgamar’s killing came a day after Tigers warned that the government’s refusal to hunt down and disarm renegades fighting a silent war with their cadres in the east of the island could rekindle a war that has already killed more than 64,000 people.—Reuters