Sri Lanka cabinet bids to reconvene parliament

Sri Lanka’s Cabinet is trying to reconvene Parliament in defiance of a two-week suspension by the president in her power struggle with the prime minister over how to resolve Sri Lanka’s two-decade conflict with Tamil rebels, officials said.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s administration was taking steps to convene the legislature, where the prime minister controls a slim majority, a spokesman said.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga – who has wide constitutional authority to dismiss the government – sparked the country’s political crisis on Tuesday by taking control of three top ministries while the prime minister was on a US trip, suspending Parliament for two weeks and sending troops around the capital.

She then ordered a 10-day state of emergency.

Wickremesinghe returns tomorrow from his trip to Washington, where he met with President George Bush and where US officials expressed support for the prime minister’s efforts to find a lasting peace with Tamil rebels.

The conflict, which has left 65,000 people dead since 1983, has been under a cease-fire for 20 months, but peace talks are stalled over rebel demands for broad autonomy in the country’s north.

Kumaratunga says those demands endanger the country’s sovereignty, and accuses Wickremesinghe of being too soft on the rebels and not doing enough to ensure they disarm.

At a meeting of Wickremesinghe’s Cabinet, ministers resolved to have Parliament “immediately reconvened” so that a national budget can be presented as scheduled on November 12.

But with the president’s order suspending Parliament until November 19, it was not immediately clear how – or if – this could be done.

Sri Lanka is already feeling deep economic repercussions from the crisis. The country’s stock exchange plunged on Wednesday and tourism officials said 2,000 tourists had cancelled their trips to the tropical island.

Presidential aides have insisted Kumaratunga would not resume fighting the Tamil Tiger rebels.

However, both the government and rebels have put some of their forces on alert.

Wickremesinghe played down the power struggle during his Washington trip as “part of Sri Lankan politics” and vowed that “When I get back, I will sort it out.”