Lankan bipartisan peace bid fails

President Mahinda Rajapakse met with United National Party opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe Thursday evening to agree on a common approach to the festering conflict, but the initiative failed, an opposition spokesman said.

"The opposition leader did not know that even as they met, the government had secured the defection of one of his MPs," United National Party MP Joseph Perera said. "So how can we work like this?"

"We cannot accept this double dealing and we cannot support the government anymore."

Minutes before the meeting, Rajapakse gave a minister post to opposition legislator Susantha Punchinilame who had defected to the ruling party.

Analysts say a settlement with Tiger rebels in the decades old ethnic c conflict requires an amendment to the constitution and that would mean bipartisan support for the two thirds majority needed in parliament.

The failed effort came as Sri Lanka's political parties were under pressure from the island's foreign backers to end the separatist conflict, which has claimed over 60,000 lives since 1972.

The meeting between Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe came a day after US Ambassador Jeffrey J. Lunstead said that a solution to civil strife would require "radical changes in the way the entire nation is governed."

These changes must "empower all the people of Sri Lanka: Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and others, and give them a greater say in how they are governed in the areas where they live", he said.

Spiralling violence has claimed the lives of more than 830 people and displaced tens of thousands more since December as a ceasefire agreement between Colombo and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) crumbles.