London, Sep 23 (IANS) Last week’s massive blast in Islamabad shows Al Qaeda militants learnt bomb-making from the Tamil Tigers, says a visiting Sri Lankan minister.“The Pakistani bomb is very similar in style to Colombo’s Central Bank truck bomb (of 1996) which was only less in weight,” said foreign employment minister Keheliya Rambukwella, who is also Sri Lanka’s defence spokesperson.

Rambukwella told a press conference Monday the 1,300-pound bomb that killed 53 people at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad Saturday showed Al Qaeda learnt the technology from militants belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Both were powerful bombs laden in trucks that were driven by suicide bombers. The Colombo attack killed 91 people.

Rambukwella said terrorist groups constantly exchange technologies and that, according to anti-terror experts, “suicide jackets” used by the Al Qaeda may have been developed by the LTTE.

The Sri Lankan minister also made the extraordinary claim that some Western politicians are on the “payroll of the LTTE”.

“One reason for the support of terrorism of the LTTE is the large number of Tamil voters available in certain Western world electorates that arouse political aspirations for politicians.

“The other reason is some Western world politicians are corrupt and are on the payroll of the LTTE,” he said.

Even more extraordinarily, the press spokesperson for the Sri Lankan High Commission said Rambukwella made his comments in the context of “certain pro-LTTE elements” bringing “anti-Sri Lanka propaganda to the Labour Party convention in Manchester”.