Sri Lanka coalition under siege as monks, Tigers raise pressure (Agencies) Updated: 2005-06-07 20:24
COLOMBO - Sri Lanka's president came under intense pressure as a key minister
quit and the influential Buddhist clergy vowed to end her career if she approved
an aid-sharing deal with Tamil Tiger rebels.
The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) also raised the stakes by
warning that a truce arranged by peace broker Norway was under "serious threat,"
signalling that the country could slip back to war.
The political crisis deepened with the sudden resignation of media minister
Mangala Samaraweera, a close confidant of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who
helped put together a coalition after elections in April 2004.
Samaraweera said he resigned for personal reasons. He retained other cabinet
posts, but analysts said his role as spokesman was crucial for Kumaratunga's
plans to announce a deal to share tsunami aid with the rebels.
The political swirl deepened after the Marxist JVP, or People's Liberation
Front, leader Lal Kantha said the party would quit the government the moment
Kumaratunga signed an aid deal, officially called the North and East Tsunami
Relief Board.
Kumaratunga's government has a five-seat majority in the 225-member
parliament and depends on the 39 votes of the JVP.
The JVP-affiliated National Monks' Front also said it would launch a campaign
to drum up public support against Kumaratunga's plans.
The monks wield considerable influence over the island's Buddhist majority in
the country of 19.5 million people.
"We will first start with a protest and then extend it to a death fast from
the weekend unless the president withdraws her decision," the front's secretary
monk, Kalawelgala Chandraloka, told reporters on Tuesday.
"If the president goes ahead, we will ensure that it will be the end of her
political career. We will make sure that no one accepts her as a political
leader in this country."
The remarks were sparked by an advertisement issued in the name of the relief
board Tuesday that said an administrative mechanism was needed to fast-track
rebuilding in the northeast, one of the areas worst affected by the tsunamis.
Some 31,000 people were killed in the December 26 tsunamis and a million
people were initially left homeless. Much of the destruction was in the
northeast, parts of which are dominated by the guerrillas.
"Let's stop the debate and decide to move forward," the advertisement urged.
"The hope of tens of thousands of children depend on this."
However, Kumaratunga's spokesman Harim Peiris said the advertisement was part
of an awareness campaign and not a formal notice of a new relief board or
tsunami aid deal.
International donors have called for a joint mechanism to distribute billions
of dollars in aid equitably in rebel-held and government areas. Several
countries, including Japan and the United States, have laws prohibiting direct
aid to the Tigers.
The aid deal is expected to bring the government and rebels into close
cooperation on rebuilding, including areas devastated by decades of a civil war
that claimed over 60,000 lives between 1972 and 2002.
The LTTE has said it is willing to agree to the aid deal with the government.
However it said a continued delay in reaching a deal has threatened a fragile
ceasefire.
The LTTE's political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan told Norway's top envoy in
Sri Lanka, Hans Brattskar, Tuesday that the Sri Lankan military was engaged in
an "undeclared economic embargo" on rebel-held areas.
"Thamilselvan said that the ceasefire agreement is under serious threat by
actions and inaction of the Sri Lankan government," the LTTE's peace secretariat
said in a statement after Tuesday's talks in Kilinochchi.
Brattskar travelled to the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi, 330 kilometres
(206 miles) north of here, for talks with the Tiger leadership amid mounting
tension between troops and the Tigers.
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