COLOMBO, Jan 10: Amid gunfire and bomb blasts, government officials are ready to deliver a report by the end of January recommending devolution and power sharing with the LTTE dominated north and east, as a means of arriving at a political settlement with the Tamil Tiger rebels.

Minister and All Party Representatives Committee Chairman Tissa Vitarana said a document, which took into consideration the views expressed by government ministers and constitutional experts, will be ready shortly.

The fresh attempts to bring forward political proposals to establish peace come weeks after several political parties, mainly the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the party consisting of Buddhist monks, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) shot down recommendations by constitutional experts, accusing them of being partial to the LTTE.

Minister Tissa Vitarana points out that fresh deliberations would take place after the new document is presented to the All Party Representative Council (APRC).

The panel of constitutional experts has been the centre of controversy after 11 of its 17 members endorsed a set of proposal for wide ranging devolution of power amid protests by the rest of the panel who put forward a different set of proposals. The fresh proposal is being prepared on the advice of President Mahinda Rajapakse, presidential sources said.

Meanwhile, the country has plunged into a deeper abyss with heightened military hostilities against the LTTE in the east as the army vows to oust the tiger rebels from the eastern guerilla stronghold in eastern Batticaloa.

“It’s a matter of time now. It could be just days before we capture the territory occupied by the LTTE,” military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe told Dawn.

On Monday a key LTTE base in the eastern Ampara district known as the “Stanley Base” fell to Special Task Force personnel, Brigadier Samarasinghe said. “We would move faster to take control of all the areas in the north east occupied by the LTTE but we cannot launch full scale attacks because they (the Tiger guerillas) are using civilians as a cover,” the military spokesperson said.

The Colombo-based peace lobby, the National Peace Council in a media release said the killing of civilians in the course of the ethnic conflict has taken a new turn for the worse.

It condemned the bomb attacks last week by suspected tiger cadres that targeted civilians in the South of the country by attacking two passenger buses and killing over 20 persons.

“The deliberate targeting of civilians in the south follows military actions by both the government and the LTTE in the north and east in which civilians have been casualties. Last week the LTTE and civic groups in the north accused the government of air force bombing of a civilian settlement in north-eastern Mannar in which 14 people lost their lives, including children”, the Peace Council said.

The statement from the National Peace Council comes days after the international truce monitors withdrew from the volatile eastern regions, suspending their monitoring in the area.

“There is no one now for the Tamil civilians in the war effected areas to turn to. With more military operations expected, we fear the worst”, human rights activist, Saroja Sivachandran said.