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New Year messages: From the President

President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga in a New Year message states:

"I wish to express my very best warm good wishes to all Sri Lankans on the dawn of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. It has, undoubtedly, become the grandest national festival of all Sri Lankan people.

From time to time we hold various festivals, yet the foremost national festival of the Sri Lankans is the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. That, indeed, is a national occasion of much festivity and happiness coming down to us through many centuries nurtured by sterling values and characteristics unique to our nation and culture. It is the New Year that prominently demonstrates that the Sinhala and Tamil people are bound by a deep going cultural bond.

The theme of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, more than anything else, is happiness, peace, unity, prosperity and co-existence. The importance and relevance of this theme has been brought into focus today more than at any time before.

The one great hope of the people is that the present effort for peace and national unity will be crowned with success. They expect an honourable peace. Certainly we need a peace that ensures to all ethnic and religious groups their rights legally and constitutionally.

When creating conditions for the dawn of peace to the North and East, we cannot be unmindful of the peace and unity in the rest of the country. Peace is not divisible. It should be equally meaningful to all. Without the peace and unity of the South, the peace and unity of the North or East cannot be thought to be complete.

In this exercise eschewing of enmity, vindictiveness, violence and terror is indispensable. It is only then that politics of co-habitation based on consensus can be made a success. It, therefore, becomes very clear that we must build a peace that guarantees and safeguards the freedom, democratic rights and human rights of the people of all the areas of the country.

Let us resolve on this New Year Day to strive to usher in a peace, which meets these objectives. I fervently wish you all a Happy New Year!"

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