COLOMBO, Aug 24, 2005 (Xinhua via COMTEX)
-- Sri Lanka's Muslim minority must be represented in future peace
negotiations aimed at ending the island's ethnic armed conflict, the main
opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said Wednesday.
In addressing his party's legislators,
Wickremesinghe emphasized the need for Muslim representation, saying that
the matter was endorsed at a previous round of peace negotiations between
the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ( LTTE) in 2003.
Rauff Hakeem, leader of the country's main Muslim party Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, was a member of the government delegation in the negotiations which took place between September 2002 and April 2003.
Later the Muslim parties demanded a separate Muslim representation which the Tamil Tigers at the time was not in favor.
The talks came to be stalled in April 2003 when the Tigers staged a temporary pull out.
Muslims and the Tamils have had a hostile mutual relationship particularly in the multi-ethnic Eastern Province.
The Tigers in 1990 chased away a large number of Muslims from the northern Jaffna peninsula as part of their then ethnic cleansing act.
However, after the signing of the Norwegian backed truce agreement in February 2002, Hakeem and the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabakaran entered an agreement mainly aimed at halting LTTE harassment of the eastern Muslims.