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
