COLOMBO: The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the pro-LTTE Tamil party seen as the political wing of the LTTE, said on Wednesday that President Mahinda Rajapakse’s complete rejection of a Tamil homeland demand ahead of Feb 22-23 peace talks in Switzerland was not an impediment to the resumption of face to face dialogue between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The head of the TNA, R. Sampanthan said that the Tamils ‘are not talking about an exclusive Tamil homeland’ but reiterated that the cultural factor of the Tamil-speaking people should be respected.

In an interview with Dawn the Tamil politician however declared that the unitary state concept specified by President Rajapakse in his policy statement soon after assuming office last November ‘constitutionally has connotations unacceptable to the Tamil people.’

President Rajapakse in an interview with the Reuters news agency on Monday had rejected any likelihood of the government entertaining the LTTE’s long standing demand for a traditional homeland.

“There’s only one country, we can share power. Not a separate state. That idea must be taken off … it is completely out,” Rajapakse told the news agency.

The President however said that he would rein in paramilitary groups in the north east which the LTTE say are attacking them.

The disarming of paramilitary groups especially the militant faction of the LTTE renegade Karuna which wages a shadow war on the LTTE has been a continuous demand of the Tigers.

However, government and military sources point out that the LTTE’s pressure on the government to disarm the Karuna faction is a way of ‘shifting’ the responsibility of tackling their own problems.

“The issue of Karuna is a problem of the LTTE. But the Tigers, by linking the military to Karuna, claiming that the army was helping their renegade, have managed to conveniently shift the responsibility over to the government. The LTTE basically now wants the government to clean up its own mess,” a government official told Dawn on condition of anonymity.

“The peace talks in Geneva are going to be about the implementation of the ceasefire. Therefore, the main focus should be on the rulings given by the Nordic truce monitors, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission on the ceasefire violations, and re-vamping of the ceasefire in such a manner that the Tiger guerrillas adhere to it,” a top ranking military source at the Military headquarters in Colombo said.

The head of the government Peace Secretariat, Dr. John Gooneratne, insisted that the government will be looking at revamping the ceasefire and concentrating on not giving ‘loopholes’ to the Tigers.

“The Ceasefire Agreement we have is far from being an ideal one. So there are many loopholes in it that the LTTE exploits to its advantage. There are many shortcomings in the ceasefire that need to be addressed. The Government’s objective is to make the ceasefire a meaningful one. We approach the forthcoming talks in a positive way. There are many issues relating to the ceasefire that need urgent attention,” Dr Gooneratne, who will be part of the government peace delegation, said.

The Nordic truce monitors overseeing the truce signed between the government and the LTTE on Feb 22, 2002, have ruled 3,471 incidents as violations by the LTTE from a total of 5,464 incidents reported by the military. According to statistics the LTTE have carried out over 600 killings in the past four years of the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which helped President Mahinda Rajapakse campaign for the Presidency last November, has insisted that the peace talks should focus on the creation of an entirely new ceasefire agreement, revolving round the policies spelt out by the president in his policy document, the ‘Mahinda Chinthanaya’.

The president’s policy document specifies on “critically examining” the merits and demerits of the steps taken so far to deal with peace process and pledges “considering a fresh approach.”

“The JVP welcomes the breakthrough achieved by President Rajapakse to bring the LTTE to the negotiating table. This is a new beginning. This is not a continuation of the failed peace process as happened in the past,” the JVP said in their statement issued to the media. The Presidential Secretariat sources said the government would be looking at a devolution of power along the lines of the devolution model used by Britain, in order to forge a permanent path of peace.