Sri Lanka main opposition to shun all party committee on ethnic strife

Sri Lanka's main opposition United National Party (UNP) said Monday that the party would not take part in a special committee deliberations called as part of an effort to reach all political party consensus in dealing with the Tamil Tigers to present a political package to end the conflict.

Tissa Attanayake, the UNP spokesperson said that the party had already written to President Mahinda Rajapakse stating its inability to nominate two members to attend the committee meeting of the All Party Conference convened by the President for Tuesday.

Attanayake said the UNP's political affairs committee is to meet in an urgent session on Tuesday to decide on a tough line of action against the Rajapakse administration.

The UNP alleges that Rajapakse was luring its MPs into the government fold by offering ministerial perks with the idea of weakening the main opposition party.

The UNP suffered two defections last Thursday - the fourth since Rajapakse assumed Presidency in November last year. "We feel that our sincerity in co-operating with the government to try and solve the ethnic crisis is being betrayed. There is a demand from a larger majority of party membership to go in to a strong action plan against the government," Attanayake said.

Rajapakse has called for the Tuesday's meeting of the All Party Conference with the broader objective of achieving southern consensus in order to solve the north east conflict.

Rajapakse and the UNP leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, met on a one to one meeting on Thursday and half an hour prior to that a UNP MP had been offered a deputy ministership in the government by Rajapakse.

The latest bickering between the two major political forces in the country comes at a time when the current upsurge of violence had endangered the Norwegian backed peace process with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels.

Nearly 900 people have died in the escalation of violence since the end of 2005. The government and the Tiger rebels blame each other for the escalation of violence and international pleas to the return to the negotiating table have been of no avail.

More than 64,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka's long drawn out of separatist armed conflict. The armed hostilities since the mid 1980s came to a halt with two parties entering the February 2002 truce agreement.

Source: Xinhua