Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne told the Sri Lankan Parliament the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were operating three training camps in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The state is the nearest part of India to Sri Lanka, being only 33 miles across the Palk Strait. It is also home to many ethnic Tamils.

Jayaratne said intelligence reports showed one of the camps was training rebels to assassinate officials in Sri Lanka.

"Their next target is to create small-scale attacks," he said. "The entire nation must be ready to face this threat."

But after strong denials from senior Indian government leaders and top Indian security force officers, Sri Lanka's government quickly said the prime minister based his statements on wrong information.

Jayaratne told the Sri Lankan newspaper The Daily Mirror that accounts of the supposed camps were "mentioned in two newspaper reports" and "there appears to be false information in these reports."

"The incorrect statement made by Prime Minister Jayaratne was a closed chapter as he himself has made a statement accepting the mistake," Sri Lankan Youth Affairs and Skills development Minister Dullas Alahapperuma said. "The denial of the existence of LTTE camps in Indian soil strengthened the friendship between the two countries."

An opinion article in the Sri Lanka Guardian newspaper questioned the prime minister's understanding of the government's victory over the LTTE in 2009, acknowledged by the LTTE itself. Many of the LTTE's senior military leaders were killed in the last year of their decades-long insurgency that killed up to 100,000 civilians, government troops and rebels.

Jayaratne, 80, may be suffering from a "fear psychosis," the unsigned Sri Lanka Guardian article said. He "is said to be suffering from Tamil Tiger haunt syndrome even after the LTTE has been militarily vanquished outright by the government."

India was quick to deny and condemn Jayaratne's comments amid tense relations between the countries. Both are holding fishermen from the other country and their boats after allegations the detainees were fishing in the wrong territorial waters.

India's Ministry of External Affairs "categorically" denied the camps existed. "Such a reference is indeed unfortunate and we urge the government of Sri Lanka to desist from reacting to speculative and uncorroborated reports," a statement said.

Tamil Nadu's Director-General of Police Letika Saran called the reports of LTTE camps "baseless and devoid of any reality."

State police are patrolling coastal areas of the state with regard to insurgent activity, including that of LTTE rebels, she said.

"The intelligence wing of the state is fully geared up and constantly monitoring such information, and the State police, including the Coastal Security Group, are keeping a vigil in coastal areas of Tamil Nadu," Saran said. "The police were taking action immediately on any report or intelligence input received from any quarters."

She also said the attack at the Mahabodhi temple in the state capital Chennai in late January wasn't carried out by LTTE sympathizers. "The LTTE has no role in this affair and their very presence in Tamil Nadu is denied," she said.

All religious groups in Tamil Nadu condemned the attack. Around 10 people armed with sticks stormed the Mahabodhi Society temple and smashed the interior, wounding four of the temple's Sri Lankan Buddhist monks who tried to stop them.

The LTTE was founded in northern Sri Lanka in 1976 by Velupillai Prabhakaran to fight for a separate Tamil Eelam state. The LTTE evolved into one of the most successful and deadly terrorist groups, an FBI report said in 2008.

Since the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, the Sri Lankan government and former rebel leaders have been attempting a major rapprochement to avoid falling back into what became one of the world's bloodiest rebel insurgencies.

"As terrorist groups go, it has quite a resume," the FB I report said. The LTTE "perfected the use of suicide bombers; invented the suicide belt; pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks; murdered some 4,000 people in the past two years alone; and assassinated two world leaders -- the only terrorist organization to do so."

The LTTE's successful high profile attacks included assassinating several high-ranking Sri Lankan and Indian politicians, including Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993 and former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

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