Colombo, Sep 01: Warning Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunge against making political capital out of slow progress in the peace process, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today said he was working with peace broker Norway to persuade LTTE to dismantle a disputed camp in the eastern district of Trincomalee. Asserting he was determined to solve the camp dispute, Wickramasinghe, in a letter to the president said "please be assured that this government will ensure peace with full security." The Tigers have refused to vacate the camp despite repeated rulings by the Scandinavian truce monitoring panel known as the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM). The stand off has added to tensions between Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga for quite some time. In the two-page letter, the premier also warned Kumaratunge against making political capital out of the tense situation in the east following the camp issue and a spate of killings blamed on the tigers. "At a time like this, acting on the basis of political expediency is, in my view, not the correct approach," he said. Wickremesinghe said his government had taken several steps to step up security in the eastern province where there had been attacks against minority Muslims, leading to deaths of at least four of them.

Bureau Report