Sri Lanka said Friday it had arrested the acting head of the Tamil Tigers, who had vowed to revive the separatist group following its military defeat in May and the death of its veteran leader.

Selvarasa Pathmanathan, better known as K.P., was "taken into custody by Sri Lankan law enforcement authorities", the defence ministry said in a statement.

Sri Lankan media said the arrest took place Thursday in Thailand, but the Thai government denied the reports and insisted the man was captured the previous day in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

tamil tigers leader Selvarasa Pathmanathan Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said intelligence chiefs had confirmed "that K.P. was arrested in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday night and he was transferred to Sri Lanka via Bangkok airport".

But the police chief in Malaysia, which has a large Tamil minority, said he had no knowledge of such an arrest.

"I do not know about it," police chief Musa Hassan told AFP in Kuala Lumpur.

Sri Lankan military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said Pathmanathan "was arrested abroad and is being questioned by investigators at the moment in this country".

But he did not give further details, including where the man was arrested.

State-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corp. radio said the man's arrest was a "victory for all nations against terrorism".

It said Pathmanathan had used more than 100 passports to travel abroad on fundraising and arms-smuggling trips.

Wanted by Interpol for gun-running

A key figure in the overseas operations of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Pathmanathan took up the leadership of what was left of the group after the death of long-time Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Prabhakaran was killed by security forces in mid-May as they overran the LTTE's last jungle holdout in Sri Lanka's northeast and eliminated its military leadership.

The military victory ended the LTTE's four-decade struggle for an independent Tamil homeland, one of Asia's longest-running ethnic conflicts.

There was no comment on the pro-rebel Tamilnet website, but an e-mail claiming to be from the Tigers sent to news agencies in Colombo said Pathmanathan was arrested on Wednesday near a hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

Pathmanathan's whereabouts had been a closely guarded secret, but he was known to be in Thailand when the Tigers held peace talks with Sri Lankan representatives in 2002 and 2003.

Two years ago, he managed to escape a Thai security raid and was later believed to have shifted to Malaysia. He gave interviews to British media after the Tigers were crushed in May.

Pathmanathan, 55, is also wanted by Interpol on gun-running charges and by the Indian government in connection with the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1991.

Pathmanathan was believed to be in control of the LTTE's substantial overseas assets as well as a lucrative fund-raising network among expatriate Tamils.

Along with other foreign-based LTTE leaders, Pathmanathan announced plans in June to reorganise what remained of the rebel movement and to form a "trans-national government" with himself as its head.

"The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam has reached a new state," he said at the time. "It is time now for us to move forward with our political vision towards our freedom."

His capture would appear to halt any such efforts - a fact trumpeted by the Island newspaper in Colombo.

"K.P.'s arrest will effectively neutralise ongoing efforts to revive the LTTE," it said.