COLOMBO, April 4: Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's party led election results announced on Sunday but failed to secure a stable government needed to revive peace talks with Tamil Tiger rebels.
Results of Friday's vote gave Kumaratunga's leftist Freedom Alliance 105 seats, or eight seats short of the magic number of 113 needed to win an absolute majority in the 225-member legislature.
The United National Party (UNP) of her main rival Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had tried to make the election a referendum on his efforts to broker peace, trailed with 82 seats.
Kumaratunga, who can remain president until December 2005, has to invite a legislator-elect from her party to form a cabinet and prove a majority when the new parliament meets on April 22, election officials said.
However, there were no immediate signs that any of the smaller parties were willing to join Kumaratunga's Freedom Alliance, which has a strong contingent of Marxists who are heavily critical of concessions to Tamil rebels.
Proxies of the Tamil Tigers, the Tamil National Alliance, said they would provide support to any future government that recognises them as the "sole representatives" of the Tamil minority and accept their plan to devolve power.
The Tigers in November unveiled their blueprint for peace in the form of establishing an "Interim Self-Governing Authority" in war-torn areas, but Kumaratunga's party has already rejected it, arguing it was a stepping stone to a separate state.
Sri Lanka's 13th parliament since independence from Britain in 1948 will be one of its most ethnically and religiously polarised. The Tiger proxies won 22 seats to become the third largest group while the radical nationalist all-clergy National Heritage Party saw nine of its monks elected to parliament. The monks staunchly oppose the Tigers, whose three-decade campaign to set up a Tamil homeland has claimed more than 60,000 lives. -AFP
