Monks back Lankan PM after pledge to drop federal solution

The all-monk National Heritage Party (NHP) said it had promised support to the premier during a meeting with him on Tuesday. A formal deal will be signed at one of Buddhism's holiest shrines in the island, the Temple of The Tooth, next week.

"We are supporting the prime minister on the basis that any solution will be based on preserving the unitary character of the state," NHP spokesman and Buddhist monk legislator Athuraliya Ratana told AFP.

State-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation confirmed that the premier had secured the support of the Buddhist monks' party, a day after a similar deal with the main Marxist party the JVP, or People's Liberation Front.

Both parties are seen by political analysts and diplomats as nationalistic groups appealing to hardline elements among the majority Sinhalese community.

The NHP has nine seats in the 225-member parliament and bitterly opposes a federal solution. President Chandrika Kumaratunga, the main opposition and the ruling Freedom Alliance of Rajapakse had earlier accepted such a solution.

Nearly 70 percent of Sinhalese are Buddhists while the minority Tamils are mainly Hindus.

The government and Tamil Tiger separatist rebels agreed during their peace talks in December 2002 to work towards a federal state as a way of ending violence in a country where 60,000 people have died in ethnic bloodshed.

Those talks, however, have remained on hold since April 2003.