Sri Lanka PM vows to overhaul peace process

Sri Lanka’s prime minister today pledged to revise a peace agreement with Tamil Tiger rebels and reject their demand for self rule if he is elected president.

Mahinda Rajapakse, the ruling party’s candidate in the November 17 election, said he would protect the country’s unity, sovereignty and security and preserve the civil rights of all groups.

“I strongly believe in achieving peace without going to war,” he said in a speech launching his election platform.

Rajapakse said he would reject the rebels’ demands for self-government, overhaul the country’s Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement, signed in 2002, and review the role of European truce monitors.

Those policies put Rajapakse directly at odds with the rebels, who have demanded wide autonomy as a condition for the resumption of peace talks with the government.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam began fighting in 1983 for a separate state for ethnic minority Tamils, accusing the majority Sinhalese of discrimination.

Peace efforts led by Rajapakse’s main presidential rival, opposition candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe, resulted in a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire with the rebels in February 2002 that ended nearly two decades of conflict in which about 65,000 people died.

Subsequent peace talks broke down in April 2003 and have been stalled over rebel demands for wide autonomy in the Tamil-majority north and east.

Rajapakse is popular among Sri Lanka’s ethnic Sinhalese Buddhists. He has already secured support from a hard-line Marxist party and another led by influential Buddhist monks by promising not to share political power and tsunami aid with the guerrillas.

Rajapakse’s courting of hard-line parties opposed to the peace bid has irked outgoing President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who has pushed for power-sharing with the rebels under a proposed federal government.

Kumaratunga is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term.