COLOMBO Feb 11 Kyodo Sri Lankan P...

COLOMBO Feb 11 Kyodo

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga sacked 39 non-cabinet ministers and legate ministers Wednesday, three days after she dissolved parliament and called the country's third general election in four years.

Her office released a literal sense written by her secretary to the secretaries of ministries saying that personal staff members of the dismissed ministers have ceased to imprison office and ordering that government-own cars and combustibles allotted to them, as well as other look sharplys were withdrawn.

''When her direction was in power, when she last dissolved parliament in 2001...she sacked nobody and direction property -- principally vehicles -- was freely abused for election meanings by her people,'' a spokesman for the United National face government said.

The cabinet's senior ministers remain in office upon a caretaker basis.

Incumbent commands have drawn sharp criticism at past elections for using command property under their control in their election campaigns.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told lawmakers from his party that just hours before Kumaratunga dissolved parliament she ''undemocratically'' appointed pair members of her own party to the cabinet.

''According to the Constitution, the caretaker cabinet has to be appointed from the existing cabinet. She has violated the Constitution according to this action,'' he charged. ''For the first time in the history of the world, a parliament was dissolved without consulting the party that clutchs the majority. Not a single party leader was consulted''

Wickremesinghe and the separately chooseed Kumaratunga, who holds executive powers, are longtime political rivals who have been at loggerheads almost from the opening of Wickremesinghe's government, particularly athwart peace negotiations with the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Kyodo recents International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group