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Rajapakse's allies reject Geneva agreement

V.S. Sambandan

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse's electoral allies — the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) — have rejected the Geneva agreement between Colombo and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the ground that it ran contradictory to the Government's position on the ceasefire agreement (CFA).

In Geneva, the Government and the LTTE agreed to uphold the CFA. Colombo also committed itself to disarming armed groups. This agreement, the JHU said, "is a candid admission on the part of the Government that there were paramilitary forces. If there were groups that should be disarmed, it should be the LTTE," the JHU said.

"Truce unconstitutional"

"The unitarist JVP welcomed the Government's handling of the Geneva talks as a "step in the right direction," but denounced the post-talks statement. The JVP welcomed the Government's opening statement, in which Colombo's Chief Negotiator, Nimal Siripala de Silva, said the CFA was unconstitutional. It, however, said the joint statement at the conclusion of the talks was contradictory. The JVP said the concluding statement "indicates" that the Government was "somewhat pressurised" by the facilitators, Norway. "We would never approve that. We believe that this should be corrected in future talks," it said.

The majoritarian JHU rejected the Geneva statement and said it was a "violation" of the consensus reached between the President and their party before the Presidential poll. Prior to last November's Presidential poll, Mr. Rajapakse had entered into electoral pacts with the two parties in which the two parties insisted that the CFA be "reviewed" on the ground that it was "against Sri Lanka's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

The LTTE's former special commander for Batticaloa-Amparai, V. Muralitharan ("Col." Karuna), has said that he would "resist" any move to disarm his supporters. "No one can impose their will on us to take away our arms from us, which we use only for defensive purposes," he was reported as saying.

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