Sri Lanka Tamil party to continue dialogue with government despite resignation of minister

Sri Lanka's major Tamil party, Tamil national Alliance (TNA) has said the dialog between representatives of the party and the government would continue despite the resignation of a member of the government delegation who was a senior government minister.


Former Prime Minister and senior minister Rathnasiri Wickramanayaka resigned from the government delegation saying that he could not hold discussions with the TNA after the party had welcomed the report by the Experts Panel appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General on Sri Lanka.

TNA parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran has told the media that the discussion between the government and TNA would continue as decided at the previous meeting which was held at the Presidential Secretariat last week.

He has said that the government had informed the party that the talks would continue.

The government has immediately appointed the former Secretary-General of the Sri Lanka Peace Secretariat, and the former Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, parliamentarian Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha in place of Wickramanayaka.

The sixth round of talks between the government and TNA is to be held on May 12.

In addition to Prof. Wijesinha, the government delegation will include parliamentarians Sajin de Vass Gunawardena and Ministers Prof. G.L. Peiris and Nimal Siripala de Silva.

The TNA delegation will include parliamentarians R. Sampanthan, M.A Sumanthiran, Suresh Premachandran and Presidents Counsel K. Kanag-Iswaran.