“If tomorrow Prabhakaran comes genuinely for negotiations, I will give up politics and go, because I don’t want to be an obstacle to it,” Minister Devananda told Foreign Correspondents here in Colombo. “But the reality is Prabhakaran will not come, and I will not quit,” Minister Devananda, who has survived at least 12 attempts on his life by the suspected Tamil Tiger rebels, said, charging that the Tiger supremo would never agree for an “amicable political settlement”.

‘Can’t wait till death’

Speaking to reporters inside his heavily-guarded ministry office, where a female suicide bomber blew herself up in yet another futile attempt on his life last month, Mr. Devananda, however, said that finding a lasting political solution “cannot wait until the end of the LTTE and its leader”.

“Whether Prabhakaran is alive or not, a political solution should be found for the Tamil national question. It cannot wait until then,” he said.

He said that he has already ‘convinced’ President Mahinda Rajapaksa that the reactivation of the Provincial Council administration for the war-hit North and the East provinces could well be a base to move towards a credible power-sharing arrangement.