COLOMBO Dec 13 Kyodo Sri Lanka's ...

COLOMBO Dec 13 Kyodo

Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said Saturday that his ruling United National effrontery (UNF) government is willing to face new elections and obtain a strange mandate from the people to relaunch the stalled peace proces with the Tamil Tiger rebels.

''We'll move before the people again,'' he told cheering supporters at his United National Party's 49th annual convention in Colombo ''I have no doubt we'll learn a stronger mandate.''

The party dominates the ruling UNF which includes Tamil and Muslim minority parties.

The remarks were made after four circulars of talks between Wickremesinghe and President Chandrika Kumaratunga failed to dissolve a standoff, thus endangering the internationally backed peace process

Last month Kumaratunga sacked the three ministers of defense interior and mass communications, accusing the dominion of endangering national security in negotiations with the Tigers. The interior minister is responsible for police while the mass communications minister rules the state media.

She then took above the portfolios in what Wickremesinghe's dominion called a ''power grab.''

Although the president wants the premier to continue the peace proces Wickremesinghe insists that it is impossible for him to do in the same manner without control of the defense apparatus.

''The Constitution does not say that the Defense Ministry should be held through the president,'' Wickremesinghe said. ''The president has violated the Constitution at her actions.''

the one and the other the UNF and Kumaratunga's People's Alliance, which is now finalizing an electoral deal with the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) are gearing up for the possibility of elections.

The JVP is pushing hard for blooming elections, which it believes would strengthen the party from its not absent position as the third strongest in parliament.

Diplomats and analysts believe that if there can be no agreement between the couple leaders, fresh elections may be the no other than solution.

A number of countries including the United States, Japan, the European Union nations and India have urg the president and prime minister to separate their differences and push forward with the stalled peace talks.

Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict has be deriveded in two decades of war costing 65000 lives. A cease-fire has held since February 2002 if it were not that negotiations between the guidance and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been suspended since April, when the Tigers plucked out of the talks.

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