Sri Lankan PM Mahinda Rajapaksa attacks opposition parties ahead of parliamentary elections

Sri Lanka's main Tamil party TNA will not be allowed to achieve through the election what the LTTE and its slain leader Velupillai Prabakaran failed to accomplish with the gun, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa has said.

Speaking at an election rally on Wednesday ahead of the August 5 parliamentary election, the prime minister said that his action to end the LTTE's over three decades-long violent campaign had freed the country from terrorism.

"We will not allow the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to achieve their objectives," Rajapaksa said.

The TNA will not be allowed to achieve through the election what the LTTE and its leader Prabakaran failed to achieve with the gun, he said.

"Sinhalese in the south can go to the north and the Tamils in the north can travel anywhere," he said.

Rajapaksa said the TNA had pacts with some political parties to fulfil their aims.

"We will not allow that to happen," Rajapaksa said, in a veiled reference to the Opposition group led by the former leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa.

His Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party had pledged to preserve the India-backed 13th amendment to the Constitution by granting power to the provincial councils.

The 13th amendment that followed the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord of July 1987 signed between then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and then Sri Lankan President J R Jayewardene envisaged the devolution of powers to the provinces in the midst of the island's bitter ethnic conflict.

India has been pressing Sri Lanka to implement the 13th amendment on the devolution of powers in "letter and spirit" and to fulfil the aspirations of the ethnic Tamils.

However, the Tamils complain that the 13th amendment's due power to provinces had not been devolved even after more than 30 years.

The TNA fights for 29 seats located in the north and east in the 225-member parliament. They have pledged to seek a federal solution in their struggle for self-determination.

According to the government figures, over 20,000 people are missing due to various conflicts including the three-decade separatist war with Lankan Tamils in the north and east which claimed at least 100,000 lives.

The Tamils alleged that thousands were massacred during the final stages of the war that ended in 2009 when the government forces killed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief Prabhakaran.

The Sri Lankan Army denies the charge, claiming it as a humanitarian operation to rid the Tamils of LTTE's control.

At the end of the civil war, the United Nations accused both sides of atrocities, especially during the conflict's final stages.

International rights groups claim at least 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in the final stages of the war, but the government has disputed the figures.