No Govt-LTTE pact : PM

Rodney Martinesz and Uditha Kumarasinghe

KOTTE: Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake yesterday rejected outright the allegations that the Government had a pact with the LTTE.

“There is nothing to reveal. Go and ask the man who made the charge. I have nothing to say about something that does not exist,” Prime Minister Wickremanayake told Chief Opposition Whip Joseph Michael Perera who made a special statement in Parliament centred on remark made a dissident MP Sripathi Sooriyarachchi.

The Chief Opposition Whip observed that the two former ministers had made a serious statement on national security.

He said MP Sooriyarachchi had told the Maubima newspaper that the security operations were not conducted in Killinochchi and Mullaitivu where the terrorists remain strong and that the Government concentrates only on the East and this was due to a secret pact between top politicians in the Government and the LTTE.

Sooriyarachchi had repeated this allegation at the press conference he held along with fellow dissident Mangala Samaraweera where he said he would reveal the identity of those who actually signed pacts with the LTTE and reiterated his charge that the battles were waged in abandoned terrain and not in Killinochchi or Mullaitivu.

The Chief Opposition Whip said he wanted to know if in fact there was a secret agreement between the Government and the LTTE and if so it is the responsibility of the Government to reveal this to the House.

He asked the Prime Minister when this pact was signed and what parties were involved and whether he would reveal this to the House.