COLOMBO: With Sri Lanka’s staggering ceasefire just two weeks away from completing five years, the government military ended a general amnesty for army deserters and stepped up its recruitment drive amidst claims by the Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe that Sri Lanka had lost a golden opportunity for peace.

Ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Memorandum of Understanding signed with the LTTE on Feb 22, 2002, a spokesman for the military headquarters said the response from youth for the latest drive to recruit 2,000 men for the army has had a good response.

Military spokesman Brigadier Samarasinghe said over 1,000 youth had turned up for interviews with 900 of them willing to join the Army’s elite Special Forces.

Meanwhile, leader of the Opposition United National Party, Ranil Wickremesinghe addressing parliament on Tuesday said the collapse of the memorandum of understanding signed between the government and the UNP after 18 UNP members joined the UFFA, had destroyed all possibilities of having an inclusive approach to the critical national issues.

Making a special statement in parliament where 18 UNP defectors who crossed over to the government met for the first time, Mr Wickremesinghe said the country had lost a golden opportunity which could have changed the course of history.

“This MoU was truly historic because this was perhaps the first and only occasion in our nation’s past, since Independence – 59 years ago, that the two largest and oldest political parties in the country had agreed to cooperate on several critical issues of vital importance to our people. Chief among them the Ethnic Question,” Wickremesinghe said.

Analysts say the ending of the MoU between the government and the UNP indefinitely prolongs the undeclared war with the LTTE amidst rising figures of war displaced persons.

Recent United Nations statistics revealed that close upon one million people were displaced in the volatile north-east between last August and January as troops stepped up military operations to free pockets of north and eastern territory from the Tamil Tiger rebels.