Kumaratunga advised to seek treatment in US

COLOMBO, Jan 2: Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who escaped assassination in a suicide bombing, has been advised to seek further treatment in the US to restore vision in one eye, a press report said Sunday, reports AFP.

Kumaratunga who returned home from London Thursday after treatment was told by doctors that it could be six months before she can open her right eye lid, the Sunday Island newspaper said in a report by its London correspondent.

"They indicated that she may seek further treatment in the US," the Island said, adding, however, that experts at Moorfield hospital in London had given her the green light to resume her normal duties.

Kumaratunga, 54, in her first television interview since surviving the December 18 suicide bomb attack here, told the BBC she was likely to permanently lose the use of her right eye.

"Medically, (the doctors say) I can carry on, but probably I have lost the sight on this eye," she said pointing to her right eye that remained shut during the interview with BBC's former Colombo correspondent George Arney.

There had been speculation over the weekend here of President Kumaratunga leaving for Arizona for further treatment, but there was no official word from the authorities.

Police said that a woman suicide cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) detonated explosives strapped to her body as Kumaratunga was about to get into her armoured limousine after addressing an election rally.

The blast killed 26 others and wounded 110 people who were at Kumaratunga's final election campaign rally held at Colombo's Town Hall grounds.

Kumaratunga, who was probably saved by her car, said she was the only leader who had "lived to tell the tale" after a LTTE suicide bombing.

She said she believed her life had been spared to bring about peace in Sri Lanka, where more than 55,000 people have been killed in the Tamil insurgency since 1972.