COLOMBO: Eight months after serving as President, Mahinda Rajapakse is a desperate man. All his recent attempts to seek direct contact with the LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and the LTTE leadership having failed, Rajapakse’s one hope now is for his latest peace bid to work.

With each passing day recording an average of two killings in the volatile north and east, President Mahinda Rajapakse on Tuesday kick-started deliberations on constitutional reforms but with no guarantee from the Tiger guerillas that they would support him.

Added to his troubles is the fact that his relationship with the main opposition, the United National Party (UNP) has also soured in the recent weeks. The party, which did not take part in Tuesday’s crucial all-party conference which met along with a special committee of constitutional experts, accuse Rajapakse of luring UNP MPs into the government fold.

However, UNP general secretary Tissa Attanayake told the media on Wednesday that the party had changed its previous stance not to support the government on all issues including the peace process. A huffed UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe last week took this decision after several UNP MPs crossed over to the government.

Six senior UNP MPs have shifted over to the government in the past seven months with the latest to cross over UNP stalwart Susantha Punchinilame, being given a deputy minister post in the UPFA government last week.

Presidential sources point out that more UNP members want to join the government but say no more will be welcome, as irate UNP party leaders accuse the UPFA of jeopardizing the peace process and antagonizing the UNP leadership by ‘enticing’ its members with ministerial posts.

A source close to President Mahinda Rajapakse confirmed that the President has decided to refrain from roping in UNP Parliamentarians into the government camp with immediate effect in order to get the Opposition to continue supporting the peace proposals that are being deliberated.

As a result a somewhat pacified UNP hierarchy says they will continue to support the government’s peace attempts as long as the UPFA sticks to the policy of not draining the UNP of its members.

“The UNP at a meeting presided over by party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe on Tuesday decided to support the peace process. Therefore we will attend the all party conferences convened by the president in the future. But we will not support the government on other issues,” the UNP General Secretary, Tissa Attanayake, told journalists.

However, reports confirmed that the Tamil estate workers’ party, the Ceylon Workers Congress, which had supported the UNP in the last November presidential election would be joining the government.

Meanwhile, a former minister for North-East Affairs under the UNP regime, Jayalath Jayawardena claims the party is kept ‘in the dark’ about the government’s peace strategy.

“We still do not know if it is peace within a united Sri Lanka or unitary State …”, Jayawardena stated. President Mahinda Rajapakse on Tuesday said the government will closely examine world models of devolution, especially that of neighbour India but stated that the solution to Sri Lanka would be a ‘home grown’ so that it would fit the local context.

“Our objective must be to develop a just settlement within an undivided Sri Lanka”, Rajapakse told the all party conference stating that previous proposals to bring about devolution and power sharing should also be studied. All Sri Lanka’s previous attempts to change the constitution for active power sharing with the Tamil populated north and east have resulted in mayhem with protests from Sri Lanka’s Buddhist clergy and its powerful Marxist party the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). President Chandrika Kumaratunge was booed out of Parliament in August 2000 by the UNP when she attempted pass amendments to the constitution.

“We do not want the same thing to happen this time round”, Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva who led a government delegation for peace talks in February this year opined.

Analysts meanwhile cautioned against political bickering getting in the way of establishing a lasting political solution. “One cannot continue to make the same mistakes. Any kind of multi partisanship has to take into account the political ground realities of the conflict and not let petty politics mar any process that looks at solving the country’s greatest problem”, noted Pakiasothy Saravanamuthu, head of the Colombo based think tank, the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA).

“There should be a broad framework. One cannot limit oneself to finding a solution merely within a unitary state”, Saravanamuthu observed citing President Rajapakse’s recent avoidance of the term ‘unitary state’ as a positive development.