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Peace Process Will Continue: Sri Lankan President
Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has said that the Norwegian-brokered peace process to resolve her country's 18-year ethnic conflict would continue after the agreement reached between the government and a leftist party, the official Daily News said Saturday.
Kumaratunga was quoted by the paper as saying in an interview by the state television on Wednesday that talks with separatist Tamil Tiger rebels are in no way affected by the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the ruling People's Alliance (PA) and the leftist JVP or the People's Liberation Front and the talks will go on.
She said that the talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have come to a halt in the last two months because the LTTE has told the Norwegians that they think the government is unstable and they will see who will continue in power.
The government has continuously been in touch with the Norwegian facilitators, she added.
Regarding to constitutional amendments, the president said that various groups of people will be invited officially to provide their opinions and they can take those into consideration when drafting the amendments to the constitution or in the form of a new constitution.
She also said that the PA alliance with JVP will not be an obstacle to government's free market economic policy or to any of the agreements with the International Monetary Fund.
The government signed on Wednesday MoU with the JVP, which has enabled the minority government to survive.
The JVP's 10 seats in the 225-member Parliament has helped to prop up Kumaratunga's government, which has only 109 seats following the withdrawal of the main Muslim Congress party in June.
Kumaratunga suspended parliament on July 10 for two months in a bid to avoid an almost certain defeat of her PA government in a vote of no-confidence tabled by UNP.
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