Hopes for peace rise in Lankan

COLOMBO, Jan 23: Reforms aimed at ending decades of ethnic bloodshed in Sri Lanka could be finalised in two months, a senior minister said, as the local press today strongly backed the peace moves, reports AFP.

Constitutional Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris said the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas must be involved in the peace process and he hoped to have the political package ready in a couple of months.

A tottering peace initiative unveiled by President Chandrika Kumaratunga in August 1995 received an unexpected boost last week when the main opposition did a political U-turn and offered legislative support to implement the plan.

Political analysts said the peace process was in motion following the opposition offer and moves by Norway to bring the LTTE to talks and halt the fighting that has killed more than 55,000 people in the past two decades.

"Nobody will dispute the fact that a lot of time has been lost and too much blood has been shed before we have reached the current stage when there is room for cautious optimism," the English language Sunday Island said.

The Sunday Times said the U-turn of the opposition United National Party (UNP) last week appeared to be aimed at preventing further defections and a crisis-management exercise, yet the government could use it to bring peace.

The growing bipartisan support to push forward the government's political package, which seeks to turn the country into a de facto federal state in all but name, gave a ray of hope, the Sunday Times said.

"The nation needs to escape from the clutches of parochial adventurers and party rabble, and they need to be marginalised with the same resolve with which the LTTE should be marginalised," the Times said.

The pro-opposition Sunday Leader said the opposition UNP support to the peace plan could mount pressure on LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran to enter serious negotiations with the Colombo government.

"Prabhakaran will not lightly acquiesce in the UNP joining forces with the government to push through reforms which would put him in an awkward spot with the international community and subject him to pressure to come to the negotiating table," the Leader said.

"The solution that will offer itself immediately to his evil imagination is to liquidate (UNP leader) Wickremesinghe," the Leader said.

A moderate Tamil legislator who was a co-author of Kumaratunga's devolution plan was assassinated by a Tiger suicide bomber on July 29 last year as the government prepared to present the plan in parliament.