Lanka heading for snap election

Highly placed sources close to President Chandrika Kumaratunga and her rival Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said they could not rule out a dissolution of parliament anytime after voting on the national budget on December 18.

"The compromises that we have talked about are either not workable or desirable for the peace process," a source close to the premier said. "Not many in the present parliament want an election, but we have no other option."

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The election prospect re-emerged after the premier's rejection Saturday of a compromise offered by the president to share defence responsibilities and expand the negotiating process with Tiger rebels to include more parties.

The offer, contained in a document leaked by Kumaratunga's office, came after the Tamil Tigers warned Thursday that failure to resolve the ethnic conflict would force the guerrillas to secede.

Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran warned that the Tamil minority would seek a separate state if the two leaders of the Sinhalese majority scuttled the peace bid with their bickering.

There was no immediate reaction from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to Kumaratunga's offer, which was seen by many as a climbdown from her hardline position when she sacked three ministers on November 4 and triggered the current political turmoil.

Asian diplomats said the prolonged crisis between the president and prime minister augured ill for the peace process aimed at ending three decades of ethnic bloodshed that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Norway suspended its mediation role two weeks ago saying there was no clarity as to who was in charge in Colombo after Kumaratunga, a past critic of Oslo's diplomacy, sacked the ministers of defence, interior and information and shut down parliament for two weeks.