When J.R. Jayewardene wanted to hang Prabhakaran

"However, Rajiv Gandhi was not familiar with the history of the ethnic problems in Sri Lanka.

"It is my firm belief that presidents and prime ministers should not get involved in the nitty-gritties of negotiations," says Natwar Singh, a long-time Congress leader who quit the party later after being named in a corruption scandal.

"They neither have the time nor the expertise for it. As the weeks went by, I got the impression that Jayewardene was getting the better of Rajiv Gandhi."

Natwar Singh says that then external affairs minister P.V. Narasimha Rao had reservations about the 1987 India-Sri Lanka agreement that sought to end the Tamil separatist campaign.

But Rao "was unwilling to take them up with the prime minister," he says, without revealing Rao's reservations. But he admits "there was merit in Rao's doubts" about the success of the 1987 pact.

The author feels that Rajiv Gandhi, as the prime minister, should not have met Prabhakaran in New Delhi just before flying to Colombo to sign the India-Sri Lanka agreement.

Natwar Singh later asked Gandhi if he "had got anything in writing from the LTTE chief... He got irritated and said, 'He has given me his word.'

"I said that Prabhakaran's word meant nothing. He should have been asked to give his consent in writing. He would double-cross us when it suited him. This, Prabhakaran did more than once."

Four years after the 1987 accord, a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew up Gandhi at an election rally near Chennai in May 1991. A year later, India outlawed the LTTE.