Direct talks 'pointless' - JHU

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 August 2005, 07:18 GMT]
The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), the ultra Sinhala nationalist, all Buddhist monks' party, in a strongly worded statement on Friday opposed the direct and high level talks being scheduled between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE should "lay down its arms" and "denounce" Tamils' right to secede, before holding any direct talks with the GoSL in future, the party said.

The statement said that the "new hope of talks" was nothing more than a "massive farce" on the part of the Tigers to "blindfold the International Community".

The LTTE's interest for direct talks at this point of time is aimed at finding loopholes in the CFA-agreement in order to gain more privileges to itself, the JHU statement added.

There is "no point" in further talks on a CFA agreement, which the JHU considered to be not in force due to the large number of violations "running into thousands", the statement added.

THe JHU, which has nine parliamentarians in the current parliament of Sri Lanka, has been opposing the peace process between the LTTE and GoSL, including the Joint Mechanism on post-tsunami aid delivery to the NorthEast.

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