Sri Lanka’s main Tamil party threatened on Friday to pull out of reconciliation talks if the government does not within two weeks respond to proposals on devolution of powers, a core issue that fuelled a quarter-century civil war.
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the political proxy of the now-defeated Tamil Tiger separatists, accused President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government of carrying out a “deceitful process” in talks which have reached their tenth round. “While attempting to show the world that the government was engaged in a political process as an integral part of reconciliation, what the government was really engaged in was no more than a mere facade,” the TNA said in a statement.
The government in turn blamed the TNA for trying to force its demands without wider consultation, and moved to appoint a committee to handle the talks in parliament, where Rajapaksa’s ruling alliance has a two-thirds majority.
