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Chanorika rules out

talk with LTTE

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga said on Thursday she was sure the vast majority would support her peace package for minority Tamils but ruled out keeping channels open with Tamil Tiger separatists.

"The only open channel acceptable at the moment to them is the barrel of a gun," she said.

Kumaratunga spoke the day after she said the government was ready to "shun the lust for power" and offer devolution to minority Tamils in the bid to find a political solution to 12 years of war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The peace package proposes wide-scale devolution of power to a "union of regions", including a combined north and east, the would-be homeland of the LTTE.

Kumaratunga told a news conference she thought there was "very little chance" the LTTE would support the package now after rejecting past invitations to discuss it.

The LTTE runs a virtual mini-state in the north where the armed forces are currently involved in a massive offensive, capturing 78 sq km of rebel territory last month.

"We will get the package to the people of Jaffna, but can't send it to an organisation that is at war," the president said, adding that Tamils in the north now "resented the terror perpetrated on them by the LTTE".

"The proposals were intended to express to the people of this country how the government intends to meet the concerns which led primarily to war," she said.

The Tamils for generations have complained of discrimination in land, language and education and the LTTE went to war in 1983 to fight for "eelam", or their own homeland.

After four rounds of peace talks, the Tigers broke a ceasefire with the government on April 19 after which they resumed hostilities with a vengeance.

Kumaratunga said all parties in parliament had approved the devolution package except the main opposition United National Party, in power for 17 years until last year, which had not yet committed itself.

Even the hardline Sinhala JVP had said they supported dcevolution. "But they said it should come in a more democratic atmosphere and after the abolition of the executive presidency," she said. The abolition of the executive presidency by July 15 was a campaign pledge Kumaratunga she has since postponed.

The Tamils in the past had supported the LTTE because they saw no alternative to get the government to redress injustices, she said. Now there was a viable choice.

Asked whether she expected strong resistance to her plans from those who oppose splitting the country into eight to appease the LTTE, she said there would always be some people "opposed to anything we do" but that the vociferous few did not represent the majority.

She also said the draft was not an option, unless opposition to her proposals prolonged the war.

She said her army was "quite definitely in the battlefield stronger than the LTTE" and expressed her "absolute horror" at the LTTE sending children to the front lines. The peace package is to be discussed before a select committee and then enshrined in a new constitution, hopefully within several months, she said.-Reuter