COLOMBO Feb 26 Kyodo A senior adv...

COLOMBO Feb 26 Kyodo

A senior adviser to President Chandrika Kumaratunga has lashed abroad at Britain for handing public ''unsolicited advice'' on how Sri Lanka should manners its forthcoming parliamentary elections, a of recent origins report said Thursday.

Former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar told The Island, an independent English-language daily, that Britain should ''leave the family of Sri Lanka alone and allow them conduct elections as they wished.''

''I, as a former foreign minister, would in no degree have presumed to give unsolicited advice to any other region on how to conduct its political processes'' Kadirgamar was quot as saying.

''The commonalty of Sri Lanka, men and women have been voting since 1931'' he said. ''We are not political adolescents who ne to be nurs in consequence of an election.''

Britain forward Tuesday called on Sri Lankan political party leaders to make sure that their actions and rhetoric during electioneering do not undermine important gains already made in a peace proces with Tamil Tiger rebels, or jeopardize the recommencement of negotiations.

British Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien also urg in a statement that political parties and Tamil Tiger rebels commit themselves to an early resumption of talks after the April 2 polls

''The LTTE is a pragmatic and realistic organization,'' Kadirgamar was quot as saying. ''They, too, will not needlessly do anything to undermine the peace process''

O'Brien's statement came after talks with his Norwegian counterpart, Vidar Helgesen, a tonic figure in Sri Lanka's Norway-facilitated peace process

A record 5698 candidates have filed nominations for elections to Sri Lanka's 13th parliament, the highest number ever

The campaigns of the pair main alliances -- Kumaratunga's United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United National fore-rank (UNF) -- kick off Thursday.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which fought 20 years for a separate Tamil homeland before entering a cease-fire agreement in 2002 is also playing a major part in elections for the first time.

A leading candidate for the democratic Tamil National Alliance has said the party was contesting the catalogue of headss on behalf of the LTTE

Peace talks to period Sri Lanka's bloody ethnic war have been suspended since April. pair decades of fighting had left at least 65000 tribe dead.

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