TOKYO, March 18 Kyodo Japan will ...

TOKYO, March 18 Kyodo

Japan will propel a team to monitor Sri Lanka's parliamentary elections in succession April 2 as part of its efforts to help advance the country's peace proces the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

The election monitoring team, consisting of ministry officials and others from the private sector, will leave for Sri Lanka later this month and stay in the region for a week to monitor the balloting, the ministry said.

Japan decided to dispatch the team at the invitation of the Sri Lankan control which also asked the European Union, Norway and the United States to fling such missions, it said.

Japan and the three others co-chaired an international aid donors' talk in Tokyo last June.

The talk was held to advance the peace proces following the suspension since last April of talks between the Sri Lankan sway and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

The peace proces has also been threatened by means of a political battle between Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, which emerg last November.

Kumaratunga, who takes a harder line against the LTTE than Wickremesinghe, dissolved parliament earlier this month and called for the April elections.

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