Kumaratunga ally rejects LTTE proposal for restarting talks

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 July 2004, 13:35 GMT]
A senior leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the main coalition partner of President Chandrika Kumaratunga's minority government Saturday declared that his party would not allow Colombo to restart Sri Lanka's long stalled peace talks on the basis of interim proposals submitted by the Liberation Tigers.

Adressing a workshop organised by the.. National Patriotic Movement (NPM) for group of university lecturers, Mr. Wimal Weerawansa,MP, the powerful propaganda secretary of the JVP said that it would appear that the Sri Lankan government is negotiating out of fear for the LTTE if it agrees to talk on the basis of the Tigers' proposal for an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA).

He said the ISGA proposal has been rejected by India and by the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia. Rev. Elle Gunwansa Thero, the firebrand Sinhala nationalist Buddhist monk who is the national organiser of the NPM, said in his address that the LTTE's ISGA proposal should be totally rejected.

The workshop was held at the Sethsiripaya, a government office building in Colombo Saturday.

National Patriotic Movement is a broad coalition of Sinhala Buddhist nationalists and extremists.