Sri Lankan president ready to resume peace on rebel demand

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has agreed to start the stalled peace negotiations with the Tamil Tiger rebels on their blueprint for interim self rule, the state radio announced on Friday.

The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC), however, said that Kumaratunga had told a delegation of the rebel proxy political party that "there are some aspects in the self rule proposal that she could not agree to."

The legislators of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) met Kumaratunga late on Thursday night, their first meeting since Kumaratunga's United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) came to power after the April 2 parliamentary elections.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels in October last year presented to the previous government of former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe a proposal for the setting up of an Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) for the war-torn north and east regions.

However, the Sinhalese majority in the south saw the proposals as a stepping stone for a separate Tamil state.

Rajavayothi Sampanthan, the leader of the TNA group said that President Kumaratunga had agreed to restart peace talks based on the ISGA which was the main demand by the LTTE to resume negotiations, stalled since April last year.

Sampanthan said the president had shown flexibility in agreeing to take up the ISGA but she wanted core issues of the long drawn out ethnic conflict taken up as the talks progressed.

Kumaratunga in May initiated to kick start the peace process but her attempts were bogged down due to differences of opinion on the ISGA proposals and the need to discuss core issues.

The government had earlier expected that peace talks could be resumed in August.