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Sri Lanka set for snap elections

Sri Lanka looked headed for a snap poll as attempts to resolve a power struggle hit a dead-end, sparking new fears for the peace bid with Tamil rebels, political sources said yesterday.

Highly placed sources close to President Chandrika Kumaratunga and her rival Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said they could not rule out a dissolution of parliament anytime after voting on the national budget on Dec. 18.

"The compromises that we have talked about are either not workable or desirable for the peace process," a source close to the premier said. "Not many in the present parliament want an election, but we have no other option."

The election prospect re-emerged after the premier's rejection Saturday of a compromise offered by the president to share defense responsibilities and expand the negotiating process with Tiger rebels to include more parties.

The offer, contained in a document leaked by Kumaratunga's office, came after the Tamil Tigers warned Thursday that failure to resolve the ethnic conflict would force the guerrillas to secede.

Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran warned that the Tamil minority would seek a separate state if the two leaders of the Sinhalese majority scuttled the peace bid with their bickering.

There was no immediate reaction from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to Kumaratunga's offer, which was seen by many as a climbdown from her hardline position when she sacked three ministers on Nov. 4 and triggered the current political turmoil.

Asian diplomats said the prolonged crisis between the president and prime minister augured ill for the peace process aimed at ending three decades of ethnic bloodshed that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Norway suspended its mediation role two weeks ago saying there was no clarity as to who was in charge in Colombo after Kumaratunga, a past critic of Oslo's diplomacy, sacked the ministers of defense, interior and information and shut down parliament for two weeks.

A top aide to the president said her side favored a snap election as a way out of the political impasse -- a view shared by senior aides of the prime minister, but neither wanted to be publicly seen as calling an early poll.

Both feared criticism for calling an expensive election four years ahead of schedule at a time when the economy was just beginning to recover and tourism was showing huge growth thanks to the Norwegian-brokered truce between the government and the Tigers.

Kumaratunga's People's Alliance party was already gearing to face the electorate and was finalizing a political pact with the main Marxist party, the JVP or People's Liberation Front.

A spokesman for Kumaratunga's party, Sarath Amunugama, said the deal with the JVP should be ready in a few days. He declined to give details of the agreement.

A Kumaratunga confidant said the proportional representation system favored the two parties contesting together to win a snap poll.

However, the JVP and the People's Alliance are poles apart on how to proceed with the peace process. The JVP, unlike Kumaratunga's party, wants Norway out as a peace broker and is opposed to devolution of power to the Tigers.

Kumaratunga's party was defeated at parliamentary elections in December 2001 by Wickremesinghe's United National Party which prom-ised an economic revival and peace talks with the Tigers.

Kumaratunga, who was directly elected at a separate vote two years earlier, can remain in office until Christmas 2005.
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