Sri Lankan PM gets JVP support

BBC NEWS | South Asia : "Sri Lankan Prime Minister - and presidential election candidate - Mahinda Rajapakse has signed a deal with the Sinhala nationalist JVP. The pre-poll deal includes a commitment to retain a unitary state in Sri Lanka, redraft a ceasefire with Tamil Tigers and to stop privatisation.

In return the JVP, who pulled out of the government this year complaining about concessions to the Tigers, will support Mr Rajapakse's election bid.

Elections are due by the end of 2005.

"It is agreed to protect, defend and preserve the unitary nature of the Sri Lankan state under any solution to be presented, formed or formulated for the purpose of the resolution of the national question," the agreement states. The deal is strongly opposed by the incumbent president Chandrika Kumaratunga, who comes from the same party - the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) - as Mr Rajapakse.

Ms Kumaratunga, who attracted the ire of the JVP after agreeing a deal to share post-tsunami aid with the Tigers, said on Wednesday that she would not "throw away 11 years of work in a mere election promise".

The deal signed on Thursday also commits Mr Rajapakse, if elected, to scrap the post-tsunami aid-sharing deal. President Kumaratunga was at the helm during six rounds of peace talks with the Tamil Tigers. Those talks broke down in 2003, but before then both sides had made an unprecedented agreement to work towards a federal solution of the conflict on the island.

Mr Rajapakse's main opponent in the presidential elections is former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Mr Wickremesinghe is campaigning on a platform of reviving the peace process with the Tigers and continuing policies of economic liberalisation. "