Power struggle threatens peace - LTTE

A feud between Sri Lanka's president and prime minister was testing the patience of Tamil Tigers in their bid to end 20 years of war but they would not break the island's truce, a rebel leader said.

Rebel political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan said yesterday the fate of the peace process was in the hands of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Chandrika Kumaratunga, whose power struggle has raised worries about whether the two-year-old ceasefire will hold.

"It all depends on the government and the military machine of the government to ensure that the Tamil people are not pushed towards such a situation to take up arms ever again," he said.

But Thamilselvan added the patience of the Tamil people was wearing thin.

"The anticipation is now beginning to dwindle and at a time when the people become restless, then the responsibility of the organisation is such that we have definitely to respond to the feelings of the people," Thamilselvan said.

But he said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), accused of breaking four previous truces, would not be the first to break the current ceasefire, which silenced the guns after the war that killed 64,000 people.

"There is a resolute commitment of the Liberation Tigers organisation that the Liberation Tigers will not be the ones to commence it," he said through a translator outside his headquarters in the dusty town of Kilinochchi in the island's rebel-controlled north.

It was his first interview with the international media since Kumaratunga seized three ministries, including defence, in November, delaying efforts to get stalled peace talks back on track.

Kumaratunga accuses Wickremesinghe of conceding too much to the Tigers in his bid to end the war over a separate Tamil state in the island's north and east.

Wickremesinghe responded by stopping his leading role in the peace process and saying the president had to hand back the ministries or take over negotiations.

Thamilselvan also said it did not matter who the LTTE negotiated with, as long as that person had a mandate to make peace.

"It does not matter if it is the executive president or the legislative prime minister, it is only the power that the person holds, the mandate the person holds," he said.

Kumaratunga has vast constitutional powers, but must work in an uneasy relationship with Wickremesinghe, who has a majority in parliament.

She opened peace talks with the LTTE in 1994, but when talks collapsed she unleashed the army to take back the northern Jaffna peninsula in one of the bloodiest periods of the war.

But despite their willingness to negotiate with either leader, Thamilselvan cautioned that while the feud drags on, Tamils were starting to lose hope of a return to normalcy.