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Prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said yesterday he was satisfied with progress on the peace process with the LTTE, but cautioned a final settlement to the conflict was still a long way off.

In an interview with Lindsay Beck of the Reuters news agency, the Premier said said the toughest negotiations were still to come.

"I would look at the first year as having gone well because we focused on what has to be done at the initial steps, but now we've got to start going into details. On the balance, the report card is very positive," he was quoted by Reuters as saying.

But he said the process of translating the February 22, 2002 Norwegian-brokered ceasefire into a permanent agreement would be long and arduous, with the two sides only now facing key questions like how to share power in a federal system after strides at initial talks. "We are facing the issues which require more discussions, and which will also face difficulties," Wickremesinghe said.

It is the slog through thorny details that could test the public's patience after a year of successes and a sea change in daily life since the end of the fighting that has killed 64,000 people and left more than one million displaced.

Questions like how to scale back military zones to allow displaced people to return home, how to share power in a federal system and the delicate issue of rebel disarming are just some of the daunting discussions still to be resolved.

But Wickremesinghe said he was confident that keeping the public informed would ensure support for the process and said the only way to move forward was step by step."I've always told the public that it will be a slow process. There will be breakdowns just as much as we've had breakthroughs. No peace process has ever been smooth," he said.

If there was pressure for concrete steps, Wickremesinghe said it was from the donor community, which expects progress before pledging cash at a Tokyo conference in June.

"The donor conference in Tokyo is linked to the fact that we have to make sufficient progress if we are to receive assistance. So there is compulsion on both sides," Wickremesinghe said.

Support for Wickremesinghe's government since he was elected in late 2001 on a mandate to bring peace and prosperity to Sri Lanka has been bolstered not just by the peace, but by the economic growth that came with it.

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