Sri Lanka's Supreme Court here Friday refused to allow the hearing of a fundamental rights petition filed by the publishers of a newspaper against a state order to freeze its bank accounts.

The Sinhalese-language Sunday paper Mawbima pleaded that its rights had been violated by the government decision.

The court ruled that the petition could not be allowed to proceed as the state was still in the process of investigating its bank accounts for alleged links with Tamil Tiger terrorist activities.

The court however ordered the central bank to allow the payment of salaries to the newspaper staff.

Mawbima's director Finance Dushantha Basnayake is currently under state detention for alleged links with the Tamil Tigers through a mobile phone company that he is part of.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has publicly accused the paper of favoring the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by carrying out news stories demeaning government troops in its battle against the rebels.

The newspaper is seen as being run by a group of individuals close to former Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera who was sacked by Rajapakse last month.

Samaraweera who remains a government backbencher has been critical of the Rajapakse government's human rights record in tackling the Tamil Tigers.

Another colleague of Samaraweera, Sripathi Suriyarachchi who was arrested last week has accused Rajapakse of having a secret deal with the Tiger rebels prior to the presidential election in November 2005.

The LTTE has been fighting for an independent homeland for Sri Lanka's 12.5 percent Tamil minority in the majority Buddhist nation since the 1970s.

More than 60,000 people were killed between the 1970s and 2002 when the two sides entered into a Norwegian-brokered cease-fire agreement.

Source: Xinhua