Shed LTTE mentality, Rajapaksa tells Tamil party

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Tuesday asked the Tamil National Alliance, country's main Tamil political party, to shed the 'LTTE mentality' and join hands with the government to deal with various contentious issues.

Rajapaksa's comments came after TNA on Monday called for an international inquiry into alleged war crimes based on the report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.

"They think and act like the LTTE. The LTTE behaved similarly. They came to talks (with the government), put conditions and withdrew," Rajapaksa said, adding that the alliance has been asked to take part in the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) process aimed at arriving an acceptable solution.

The PSC is to accommodate all political parties represented in national parliament and Rajapaksa has been insisting it to run parallel to the talks with TNA.

TNA, on the other hand, has held they will name their participants only after an agreement is reached on contentious issues during their talks with the government.

Both government and the TNA have been at the loggerheads and despite recent resumption of talks between them after alliance's pull-out in August, it's public calls for a tangible solution to the ethnic conflict have not been received well by the government.

Raising of thorny issues by the alliance such as police and land powers to provincial councils in the re-merged north and east provinces have also taken the talks to a critical phase.