Colombo, Mar 08: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels, embroiled in an unprecedented internal struggle that threatens the island's fragile peace process, likened a renegade commander to Cambodia's Pol Pot. But there were no clear indications yet on how the split in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) can be resolved, with worries that any internal rebel fighting would endanger a two-year ceasefire and hopes of restarting peace talks.

The Tigers yesterday turned up the propaganda war on Karuna, who split from the rebels this week, accusing him of being like the Cambodian leader who caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people in his country's ''killing fields''. ''Karuna will be seen as Pol Pot if he continues to act irresponsibly towards our people,'' Sivagnanam Karikalan, an eastern commander loyal to Prabhakaran, said on the pro-Tiger Tamilnet web site.

The Tigers expelled V Muralitharan, to whom they refer by his military name of Karuna, on Saturday for ''acting traitorously to the Tamil people'', but he is still thought to command 6,000 cadres in the east, although their allegiance remains unknown.

The report did not give details but said Karikalan, a former top aide to Karuna, ''charged that there were outside elements behind Karuna's decisions to act traitorously''. Bureau Report