Having burnt its fingers trying to broker an aborted peace accord in Sri Lanka in 1987, India is not likely to accept Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran's appeal for New Delhi's involvement in the current peace initiative between him and Colombo.

''India's participation is crucial for the peace process. We do not want to alienate India. Without the support and sympathy of the people and government of India, this problem cannot be solved,'' Prabhakaran declared at a press conference deep in Tiger-controlled territory in northern Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

But Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee yesterday ruled out any role by India in the proposed talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers, and said a ban on the Tigers in this country would remain.

''We are not going to be part of any negotiations or interfere in any talks between the Sri Lanka government and the LTTE (Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam),'' Vajpayee said in his first reaction to Prabakharan's plea that India play a role in efforts to end the 19-year-old civil war in Sri Lanka.

However, Vajpayee, who returned from a tour of Singapore and Cambodia on Thursday, said the government would ''sympathetically'' consider the request to give medical assistance to the ailing Tigers' spokesman, Anton Balasingham, in India.

Asked about Prabhakaran's proposal for Indian participation, Vajpayee said: ''In front of us, there is only one proposal and that is for providing medical treatment to ailing Balasingham in the country.''

Paid dearly

Vajpayee's hands-off attitude to Sri Lanka is a far cry from that of the opposition Congress party, which brokered a 1987 Sri Lankan peace accord but paid dearly for it by becoming embroiled in a war with the LTTE after it tried to militarily guarantee the success of that pact.

The man who was India's High Commissioner in Sri Lanka when that tripartite accord was signed, J N Dixit, however, insisted that India could not stay out of any solution to the Tamil problem in neighbouring Sri Lanka.

''The durability and sustainability of any peace process will depend on India's support,'' he told a television interviewer.

Still, there is little chance that New Delhi, which was once deeply involved in the Tamil conflict and had its peacekeeping troops in Sri Lanka, will change its declared intention not to get involved in the civil war of its neighbour.

This is because first, Prabhakaran is wanted in this country for the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, blamed on the Tamil Tigers. Second, the intentions of the Tigers' leader are regarded as suspect by some, given his record of backing out of cease-fires and peace talks in the past.

''Prabhakaran may have declared his intentions to take the path to peace, but he did not outline any basic negotiating position at the press conference,'' said Professor S D Muni of the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

The editor of Frontline magazine, N Ram, described Wednesday's press conference as a ''fiasco'' for the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, because it indicated no headway in a final settlement to Tamil rebels' violent campaign for a separate homeland.

Peace talks due

The LTTE is due to begin peace talks in May with the Sri Lankan government in Thailand, aimed at ending the conflict that has claimed 64,000 lives.

Ram said that Prabhakaran, by not denying the LTTE's involvement in Gandhi's assassination in his first public appearance in 12 years, had as good as admitted to the sensational murder, believed to have been carried out on his orders by a female suicide bomber at an election rally in southern Tamil Nadu state in 1991.

In that state, which lies across the Palk Strait that separates it from Sri Lanka, India has a Tamil community of 62 million people.

Prabhakaran, who faced a barrage of questions on the assassination from Indian journalists at Wednesday's press conference, said unemotionally that he thought Gandhi's assassination ''tragic'', but that it was best relegated to the past.

At one point, Balasingham told Indian journalists, many of whom had comefrom Tamil Nadu: "You want to dominate the press conference. You have come all the way to ask these questions. We are now involved in a peace process and you want to rake up the past," he said.

''We are not in a position to make any comments at this stage,'' Balasingham said. ''We want to establish friendly, positive and constructive relations with the government of India.''

India is our fatherland

Speaking in the Tamil language, Prabhakaran said: ''We want to engage the government of India. Our people love India and the people of India. We are culturally and ethnically linked to the Indian subcontinent. India is our fatherland.''

But Prabhakaran and the LTTE backed out of the 1987 peace accord brokered by India after the Sri Lankan navy arrested 20 top LTTE cadres in the Palk Straits, in violation of the terms of the accord.

After Gandhi refused to intervene, the captured LTTE men committed suicide by swallowing their trademark cyanide capsules. Prabhakaran declared war against the Indian army, which was overseeing implementation of the accord.

After fighting a bloody and inconclusive war with the LTTE in the jungles of northern Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990, in which 1,150 Indian soldiers died, the Indian army withdrew from the island nation and left the LTTE crippled but still a viable fighting force.

Prabhakaran, who has a reputation for being ruthless and uncompromising, is widely believed to have ordered Gandhi's assassination out of revenge for the reverses suffered by the LTTE in its war with the Indian army. But many also believe that he was only carrying out a hatchet job for Indian conspirators who wanted Gandhi out of the way.

Swift reaction

In any event, the Indian government's reaction was swift. It ordered the closure of the LTTE's bases and training camps in Chennai and strung out along the coast of Tamil Nadu.

This was a change from India's past involvement, such as Rajiv Gandhi's intervention by air-dropping supplies during a military blockade of Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula by the government in Colombo.

The Gandhi assassination also had consequences for local Indian politics. It proved disastrous for the regional Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) or Dravidian Advancement Party, which has always backed the Tigers.

In 1991, it lost to its rival, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), which opposes the Tigers and enthusiastically enforced New Delhi's ban on the LTTE when it was in power in Tamil Nadu state.

The chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayaraman Jayalalitha, who re-emerged as such following the AIADMK electoral win last year, has refused permission to Balasingham to use Tamil Nadu as a base for peace talks. ''We will not allow any member of the LTTE to set foot in Tamil Nadu for whatever reason,'' Jayalalitha said.

Jayalalitha said the AIADMK was firm that Prabhakaran should be extradited to India for Gandhi's assassination, and that the Sri Lankan government should allow India's armed forces to carry out his arrest.

Meanwhile, Gandhi's opposition Congress party denounced Prabhakaran's press conference as an attempt to rehabilitate himself and ''legitimise his political status''.

The party criticised the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for failing to get Prabhakaran extradited for the Gandhi assassination, although the Congress itself failed to do that while in power until 1996.