Tamil Tigers committed to talks
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) -- Tamil Tiger rebels would be willing to continue negotiating an end to a 20-year civil war even if the prime minister was forced from power, pro-rebel media reported.
The government and Tigers have been sticking to a truce since February 2002, but the peace bid has been in limbo since a power struggle erupted last month between Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Chandrika Kumaratunga over the direction of the peace process.
"We are ready to negotiate with anyone who comes to power at a general election in Sri Lanka as long as he or she is a person ready to work towards an agreement...with commitment and sincerity," the Tamilnet Web site quoted rebel political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan as saying late on Saturday.
Kumaratunga sacked the defence, interior and media ministers in November, saying Wickremesinghe had compromised security by conceding too much to the Tigers in his bid to end the war over a separate Tamil state in the island's north and east.
Wickremesinghe has said he cannot continue to lead the Norwegian-brokered peace process unless he controls security, leaving the two -- who are elected separately and from rival parties -- deadlocked, and the negotiations on hold.
Analysts have said if Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga cannot find a way to share power there may be fresh parliamentary elections, though that would be unlikely to change the status quo of his party controlling parliament and hers holding the executive presidency.
Kumaratunga opened peace talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 1994, but when the talks collapsed she unleashed the army to take back the northern Jaffna peninsula, in one of the bloodiest periods of the war that has killed 64,000.
The rebels responded with a suicide bomb attack that left her blind in one eye just before she won a second presidential term in 1999.
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