UNP rejects Kumaratunga's invitation

UNP rejects Kumaratunga's invitation
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

COLOMBO, DECEMBER 28: Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's efforts to form a National Government with the opposition United National Party (UNP) in a bid to find a political solution to the ethnic problem has suffered a major set back with UNP firmly rejecting her invitation.

A combined meeting of UNP's working committee and Parliamentary party on Monday decided on an emphatic ``no'' to Kumaratunga's oral invitation to UNP Ranil Wickramasinghe to join her new government.

Kumaratunga had urged Wickremesinghe to join her government after she defeated him in last week's Presidential polls. However, she has not given any formal invitation to him as she left for London immediatelly after being sworn in for treatment of her eye which was hurt in the suicide bomb attack at an election rally on December 18.

Even as it rejected the President's proposal to join the government, the UNP unanimously decided to support any ``meaningful steps'' taken by her government to solve the ethnic conflict, a partyspokesman said.

After two-and-a-half hours of intense discussions on the issue, the working committee and the Parliamentary party decided to reject the proposal to join the Cabinet, he said, adding that ``no one spoke in favour of the President's offer to form a national government''.

UNP's decision is very much in line with the Wickremesinghe's recent remarks that he preferred to extend support to Kumaratunga's peace moves from outside the government and at the same time preferred to wait till he received any concrete proposals from her.

Meanwhile, even as the latest development has taken place, senior UNP leaders have openly admitted to the local media that several party MPs were currently engaged in secret discussions with the ruling People's Alliance (PA) to cross over to the government.

Five dissident UNP members left the party last month and formed an alternative UNP group in Parliament, two of them being made ministers in Kumaratunga's cabinet. Media reports here said ten more UNP MPs wereready to cross over.