By DPA
Colombo : Parliament in Sri Lanka Thursday approved a probe into allegations that the country’s leaders had made secret deals with Tamil rebels since 1989 at the same time that bitter fighting was going on.
Over 75,000 people have died in fighting between the ngovernment forces and rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the north and eastern parts of the country over the last 25 years.
A parliamentary select committee would be appointed for the probe to be carried out by a group consisting of members of political parties that make up parliament, Speaker WJM Lokubandara announced.
A sacked former minister from the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa had requested that parliament probe allegations of a secret pact with the LTTE before the presidential elections in Nov 2005.
During the elections, rebels had called for a boycott of the poll in north and the east Sri Lanka, which allegedly helped the then incumbent president Rajapaksa to victory.
Former minister Sripathi Sooriyaarachchi has claimed if the rebels did not initiate the boycott, the current opposition leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, would have defeated Rajapaksa.
Wickremesinghe was the chief architect of a Norwegian-backed ceasefire agreement with rebels.
Rajapaksa won the 2005 presidential elections with a slender majority of 187,786 votes – 1.86 per cent more than Wickremesinghe.
Sooriyaarachchi had wanted only the allegations related to the 2005 election probed, but the government decided that parliament should investigate allegations of other past dealings with rebels since 1989, including claims that it provided rebels with financial, martial and other forms of assistance.
Similar allegations have been levelled against Sri Lanka’s former president Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was in office from 1988 to 1993 when he was killed by a rebel suicide bomber in the capital at a May Day rally.
Premadasa had been accused of handing over money as well as arms and ammunition to the LTTE during his office.
Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict was sparked in 1983 and has gone through several stages, including periods of truces and full-scale fighting between the military and rebels, under four difference presidents.