Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels said a decision by President Chandrika Kumaratunga to order snap elections was a "grave setback" to peace efforts but they vowed to maintain a two-year ceasefire with government forces.
The island's main stock market index plunged as much as 8 percent yesterday as analysts worried that the election could do lasting harm to the peace process and at best leave a political deadlock in government unresolved.
"The dissolution of the Sri Lankan parliament and the call for a snap election constitutes a grave setback to the peace process," the rebels' chief negotiator, Anton Balasingham, was quoted as saying on the Tamilnet Web site yesterday.
"Our liberation organization will rigidly observe the ceasefire regulations and maintain peace," Balasingham said.
Kumaratunga, who is locked in a power struggle with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, dissolved parliament on Sunday and set a fresh vote for April 2 in an attempt to break a stalemate between the two.
The president, who was wounded in a 1999 rebel attack, takes a harder line on the Tamil Tigers than Wickremesinghe, who was elected separately and belongs to a rival party.
"The irrational lack of consensus among the Sinhala ruling elites on the resolution of the ethnic conflict has plunged the entire country into serious political instability," said Balasingham, who is based in London.
The rebels have said they will negotiate with any leader who wins a mandate.
But they make no secret of their dislike for Kumaratunga.
The president's People's Alliance has also linked up with the hardline Sinhalese JVP party which is opposed to giving concessions to the rebels.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been fighting for two decades for a separate homeland in the north and east of the island for minority Tamils, saying they are discriminated against by the Sinhalese or Sinhala majority.
At least 64,000 people have been killed in the violence.
Stocks reacted sharply in the first trading day after the decision to dissolve parliament, falling 8 percent in early trade.
The Norwegian-brokered cease-fire has given Sri Lanka its longest lull in fighting since the 1983 start of the civil war.
Talks on a political agreement stalled in April, when the rebels walked out. Efforts to revive those talks crashed in November, when Kumaratunga sacked three govern-ment ministers, saying Wickre-mesinghe was too soft on the rebels. Since then, there has been a political stalemate.
Analysts say it is unlikely the election will solve anything.
If Kumaratunga's People's Alliance wins, talks would be complicated by her recent pact with the ultra-nationalist People's Liberation Front (JVP).
If the prime minister's United National Party (UNP) wins, the status quo continues -- and he faces a powerful president, whose job is not up for election and who suspects he would compromise security to make peace.
Wickremesinghe's party and Muslim allies have 114 seats in the 225-seat parliament and the support of 15 Tamil legislators; Kumaratunga's People's Alliance and the JVP together have 93.
Shamans in Peru on Monday gathered for an annual New Year’s ritual where they made predictions for the year to come, including illness for US President Donald Trump and the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia proclaimed as he gathered with other shamans on a beach in southern Lima, dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, and sprinkling flowers on the sand. The shamans carried large posters of world leaders, over which they crossed swords and burned incense, some of which they stomped on. In this
Near the entrance to the Panama Canal, a monument to China’s contributions to the interoceanic waterway was torn down on Saturday night by order of local authorities. The move comes as US President Donald Trump has made threats in the past few months to retake control of the canal, claiming Beijing has too much influence in its operations. In a surprising move that has been criticized by leaders in Panama and China, the mayor’s office of the locality of Arraijan ordered the demolition of the monument built in 2004 to symbolize friendship between the countries. The mayor’s office said in
‘TRUMP’S LONG GAME’: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that while fraud was a serious issue, the US president was politicizing it to defund programs for Minnesotans US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday said it was auditing immigration cases involving US citizens of Somalian origin to detect fraud that could lead to denaturalization, or revocation of citizenship, while also announcing a freeze of childcare funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some daycare centers. “Under US law, if an individual procures citizenship on a fraudulent basis, that is grounds for denaturalization,” US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Denaturalization cases are rare and can take years. About 11 cases were pursued per year between 1990 and 2017, the Immigrant Legal Resource
‘RADICALLY DIFFERENT’: The Kremlin said no accord would be reached if the new deal with Kyiv’s input did not remain within the limits fixed by the US and Russia in August Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is to meet US President Donald Trump in Florida this weekend, but Russia on Friday accused him and his EU backers of seeking to “torpedo” a US-brokered plan to stop the fighting. Today’s meeting to discuss new peace proposals comes amidst Trump’s intensified efforts to broker an agreement on Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. The latest plan is a 20-point proposal that would freeze the war on its current front line, but open the door for Ukraine to pull back troops from the east, where demilitarized buffer zones could be created, according to details revealed by
RSS