Sri Lanka's election commission announced Monday that the country's next presidential election is to be held on Nov. 17, putting an end to the long debate over the date for the election.

Dayananda Dissanayake, the Commissioner of Elections, said in a press release that the poll date is Nov. 17 and the nominations for the poll would be accepted between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. local time on Oct. 7.

Dissanayake's announcement was much awaited ever since the country's highest court ruled last month that the election must be held within this year.

The Commission issued the gazette notification declaring that an election will be held to replace President Chandrika Kumaratunga whose second and final six-year term ends on Dec. 23.

The new president should be in office within two weeks of Kumaratunga leaving office, it added.

Over 13 million registered voters are eligible to vote in the election to appoint the country's fifth executive president since the powerful executive presidency was created through the constitution adopted in 1978.

The poll will pit current Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse against an opposition leader of the United National Party (UNP) and former Prime Minister, Ranil Wickramasinghe.

Rajapakse, who is the candidate representing the United People's Freedom Alliance, has secured the support of five more parties in addition to the nine parties who are constituent parties of the ruling alliance, Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation said earlier.

Rajapakse, who is popular with the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, has vowed to find a solution to the country's armed separatist conflict based on the unitary state concept, and to nurture local business to take on foreign competitors.

Rajapakse has clinched a deal with the all Buddhist Monk party the JHU or the Heritage Party, the forth largest parity in the island country, in addition to support coming from the Marxist JVP or the People's Liberation Front, the third largest one in the country.

Rajapakse's pacts with the JVP and the JHU have met with criticism mainly from political parties representing the Tamil minority.

They claim that if elected to office with the hardline support Rajapakse may be forced to take a confrontational approach rather than a conciliatory attitude towards the process aimed at solving the armed separatist conflict.

Both the JHU and the JVP the main left party are bitterly opposed to any negotiations with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to end the country's separatist armed conflict.

Both parties have also dubbed the ongoing Norwegian backed ceasefire and the stalled peace negotiations with the Tigers as a sell out of the majority Sinhala community.

Meantime, the UNP has slammed a pact between the ruling party's presidential candidate and the JVP as a move which would take the country back to the separatist war with the Tigers.

Tissa Attanayake, the spokesman for UNP told reporters here last week that the agreement between the JVP and the Rajapakse spelt disaster as it courts war with LTTE rebels.

The agreement between the JVP and Rajapakse precludes Rajapakse from having political negotiations with the LTTE and binds him to preserve the unitary nature of the Sri Lankan state.

It also calls for reviewing of the February 2002 cease-fire agreement and to closely examine the role of the facilitator, the Norwegian government.

Attanayake said all these conditions are capable of island being dragged back to war with the Tiger rebels, and accused Rajapakse of adopting a hardline towards negotiations with the LTTE in order to please the JVP.

Sri Lanka's Supreme Court announced here on Aug. 26 that the country's next presidential election must be held within 2005, clearing up the long debate over the date for the next presidential election.

The incumbent President Kumaratunga has argued that the left- over year from her first term should mean she could stay in power until late 2006.

But the main opposition United National Party (UNP) maintains that her second term which began in December 1999 when she called a snap presidential election a year early in late 1999 ends in December 2005 and the election must be held by the end of this year.

According to the election commission, several more candidates representing other parties and groups are also expected to enter the race.

A directly elected President will have a six year term. Previously presidential elections were held in 1982, 1988, 1994 and 1999.

Source: Xinhua