Sri Lanka's incumbent President Chandrika Kumaratunga was sworn in Colombo Wednesday for a second term with pledges to bring peace to the Indian Ocean island country.

Kumaratunga, who sustained injuries in a failed assassination attempt by a suspected Tamil rebel suicide bomber four days ago, was sworn in before Chief Justice Sarath de Silva Wednesday afternoon soon after her victory was confirmed.

Kumaratunga, who was reelected in Sri Lanka's fourth presidential election with 51.12 percent of votes polled Tuesday, defeated her major rival Ranil Wickremesinghe, leader of the main opposition United National Party (UNP).

Kumaratunga, 54, vowed to bring peace to the country which has been plagued by seemingly unending ethnic conflicts since 1983 between the Sinhalese majority dominated government troops and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

"The days of terror in this land are numbered, and the number is small," said Kumaratunga after the ceremony conducted at her tightly-guarded Temple Trees residence in downtown Colombo.

"There is no individual on this earth more determined that I am to end this country's wretched and mindless bloodshed and destruction," she said while her right eye still bandaged from

injuries sustained in Saturday's assassination attempt.

Kumaratunga called on Wickremesinghe and his UNP to join her in building a consensus to solve the long-running ethnic conflicts in the country.

She also made a special appeal to the minority Tamil community to break all links with the LTTE which is fighting for a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka's north and east.

"I urge you to persuade, with every conceivable argument, anyone who is a member of a supporter of the LTTE to renounce violence and join us in establishing peace," she said.