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JANATHA VIMUKTHI PERAMUNA CHARGES THAT THE GOVERNMENT'S DECISION TO
ESTABLISH CONFEDERATE STATES WOULD DIVIDE LANKA By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Sri Lanka's second largest opposition party called the Oslo Conference decision to devolve power through a confederacy as an attempt to divide a country which has always existed a unitary nation. Calling the announcement was no news to them the JVP parliamentarian Bimal Rathnayaka said the announcement was only another repetition of the infamous pre-election agreement between the UNP and the LTTE. Bimal Rathnayaka said by the proposed confederacy the government was trying to divide a country which remained all the time as one and run it as two countries, now. Asked by the BBC Sandeshaya interviewer whether the JVP was basically against any devolution of power the JVP spokesman said, he was not against a devolution to ease culture, provincial development or ease administration. But the he said to divide the country at a national level was a horrible crime quite unthinkable of. He said this was a terrible step the government was taking and would show that terrorism paid. By allowing this, Bimal Rathnayaka said, the government was legitimizing what all the illegal things a separatist terrorist group did over the years. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna is expected to lead the major agitation against the administration of Ranil Wickremesinghe in Sri Lanka regarding the devolution of power through a confederacy, which the leftist group has been maintaining for a long period as pre-determined. The Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his justice Minister W.J.M. Lokubandara have been assuring the people that there was no such pre-election pact ever existed. But independent political analysts as well as LTTE publications have accepted that the Heroes Day Address of Velupillai Prabhakaran appealing Tamil people to vote for the UNF and all other subsequent events like allowing the LTTE to import arms, the direct negotiations between the government delegates in Thailand and Norway and now the agreement to adopt a confederate constitution for the country were done according to the once denied pre-election agreement. (EOM) (06/12/02 go2lanka.com) |