Lankan president insists on extended term

Kumaratunga's People's Alliance (PA) said she would leave office only at the end of 2006 although she was sworn in immediately after winning the December 1999 presidential election for a second and final six-year term.

PA spokesman Sarath Amunu-gama said there should be no controversy over her term although she was privately sworn in again some time in 2000 as claimed by Kumaratunga herself for the first time over national television Tuesday.

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Amunugama and another senior Kumaratunga aide and former cabinet minister, Mangala Samaraweera, said they could not immediately say when exactly the president had taken her second oath of office, but insisted it was done legally.

"The government is talking about this because they have no other issues," Amunugama told reporters. "What the prime minister must do is go before the Supreme Court."

Prime Minister Ranil Wickr-emesinghe, who lost to Kumar-atunga in the 1999 presidential poll, went on to win the 2001 parliamentary election and the two leaders from rival parties have since been at loggerheads over almost everything.

The government has rejected Kumaratunga's extra year in office and insisted she must leave by December 2005.

"It is up to me to take a decision whether I am to continue in the office of president till 2006 or not," she told national television Tuesday.