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| Sri Lanka |
| Sri Lankan president invites Tamil Tigers to talks |
| 2007-02-05 |
| Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse on Sunday invited Tiger rebel proxies in parliament to join an ongoing all-party effort to hammer out a settlement to the island’s drawn-out separatist conflict. In his 59th Independence Day address, Rajapakse asked the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to join the “All Party Conference” to prepare a political solution to the conflict, which has claimed more than 60,000 lives since 1972. “I also wish to make this appeal to the Tamil National Alliance represented in parliament, who have so far not entered into dialogue or understanding with us,” he said in his address to the nation. “It is only by joining with us that the innocent Tamil people of the north can be liberated from terrorist intimidation and the misdeeds of violence,” Rajapakse said. “If you are anguished in fear and anxiety and lack in human freedom, however much democratic the political ideology you claim to follow, I must state in all honesty that none of you are free men,” he said. The TNA has 22 seats in the 225-member national parliament and its parliamentarians are proxies of the Tiger guerrillas. If the TNA joined in an all-party effort, the government would be within striking distance of cobbling together the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution after 18 opposition legislators defected last week, analysts said. |
| Posted by:Fred |