Social Services and Social Welfare Minister Douglas Devananda said that the ban on the LTTE was timely. But had the Government proscribed it earlier, a number of precious lives could have been saved and large scale destruction of public property averted.He told The Island that apart from several atrocities committed during the past two decades the LTTE had used 200,000 innocent civilians as human shields and it was an unpardonable crime. The LTTE was proscribed at a time when it was engaged in killing those with alternate ideas. They were people who refused to pay extortion money and did not want to support them, he said.The Tiger terrorists were taking people for a ride on the pretext of fighting for their rights. The proscription could be described as an act of redeeming the Tamil people from the inhuman cruelties inflicted on them by the Tigers. Although some had said that the proscription of the LTTE was a tactic adopted by the Government to circumvent discussions with them, he was of a different view because the LTTE had never made a genuine attempt to bring a political solution for the Tamil people, Devananda said.The LTTE has a history of having aborted several opportunities for arriving at a political solution to the problems of Tamils.They used those opportunities to increase their armaments and never worked for the well-being of Tamil people. It was crystal clear that the aspirations of the Tamil people could never be achieved through the LTTE, he said.