With Sri Lankan troops closing in on the last remaining Tamil Tiger stronghold of Mullaitivu, speculation is rife that rebel chief Velupillai Prabhakaran has fled to Southeast Asia to "fight another day".
 
Prabhakaran is the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a rebel organisation that seeks an independent Tamil state in part of Sri Lanka.

He is wanted by Interpol for murder, organised crime and terrorism.

"We don't know if he is still there. He may have already fled in a boat," Sri Lanka's army chief, lieutenant-general Sarath Fonseka, told journalists in the capital Colombo over the weekend.

When pressed for more details, he said: "We have no specific information. The only escape route available to them is via the sea towards Southeast Asia."

Indian analysts say Prabhakaran, who has led one of the bloodiest insurgencies in the region for nearly three decades and started the cult of suicide bombings, could have fled to Thailand or Malaysia.

Analysts noted that the LTTE has had a presence in Phuket, Thailand, since the late 1980s. In 1990, the port authorities in Penang impounded an LTTE commercial vessel, seizing diving and communication equipment and ammunition.

"Both Thailand and Malaysia have large ethnic Tamil communities which have been supportive of his war," said retired Indian army major-general Ashok Mehta. He had served in Sri Lanka during the Indian army's operations against the rebel outfit in the late 1980s.

"It is common for the leaders of insurgent groups to relocate themselves when the going gets tough. Prabhakaran also may have fled to fight another day," he told The Straits Times.

"I personally don't think that he has fled, but anything is possible," said NN Jha, a former Indian envoy to Colombo.

"I think he is very much there. It is not in his character to flee," said retired Indian army colonel R Hariharan, who headed the military intelligence when the Indian troops were deployed on the island.

"It would be ironic that a man, who ordered his cadres to swallow cyanide capsules and die rather than surrender, had himself fled," Jha said.

On the possibility of the rebel leader going to India, lt-gen Fonseka said: "He will not be permitted there."

He was referring to India's request for the extradition of the rebel leader, who is accused of planning the 1991 assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

"It is unlikely that Prabhakaran would cross over to Tamil Nadu," said Mehta, referring to the southern Indian state separated from Sri Lanka by a narrow strip of sea and whose people share close linguistic and cultural affinities with the island's Tamils.

Tamil Nadu was the LTTE's main sanctuary before New Delhi, which trained and armed the Tigers in the early 1980s, banned the group following the assassination of Gandhi.

"Unlike Osama bin Laden, who took shelter in the caves of the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan's border with Pakistan to escape the US bombings, there are no caves along the southern Indian coast," Mehta said.

"Again, India has stepped up its coastal vigil following the Mumbai terror attacks and I don't think he (Prabhakaran) has that kind of support in Tamil Nadu as he used to have."

Many in the military believe that nabbing Prabhakaran--or even forcing him to flee abroad--would send the rebels into a tailspin, crushing their morale and decision-making structure so badly that the group would fall apart.

The loss of Prabhakaran would be devastating to the group, said Indian journalist MR Narayan Swamy, who wrote a biography of the rebel leader.

"He is their brain. He is their heart. He is their god. He is their soul, and the whole organisation runs around him," he said.