Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's party has inched closer to a general election win, but looks short of a parliamentary majority, complicating efforts to restart peace talks with Tamil rebels.

It was a mixed message from voters, ousting Ranil Wickreme-

singhe's United National Party (UNP), but giving large minorities to smaller parties on opposing ends of the island's ethnic divide.

"This is not a good thing. The country did not need another minority government," Rohan Edrisinha, a legal expert at the University of Colombo, said after Sri Lanka's third parliamentary election in four years.

The Elections Commission said with more than two-thirds of the votes counted yesterday, Kumaratunga's United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) had 47.6 percent of the vote, compared with 37.3 percent for the UNP.

An all-clergy party of Buddhist

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monks had 6.4 percent, while a rebel Tamil Tiger-backed party had six percent.

The figures are still in flux, but projections give the Alliance up to 109 seats in the 225-member parliament -- four short of a majority -while the UNP is forecast to take 80.

"This is a complete repudiation of the UNP," said presidential spokesman Harim Peiris. "The projections show a big difference in the number of seats."

The United States issued a statement urging the new government and the Tigers to return to talks to "quickly forge a lasting peace".

Final results could be delayed for up to a week if re-polling is ordered because of possible fraud at one or two polling stations in central Kandy and Ampara on the east coast, but that is unlikely to change the overall figures.

The vote in Sri Lanka's most peaceful election in decades was fought mostly over how to permanently end the 20-year civil war that has killed 64,000 people and tarnished the country's image internationally.

Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga have shared an awkward government since he won the last election in 2001, as he controlled parliament while she had vast powers under the constitution.

Kumaratunga used those powers to call the snap election after accusing Wickremesinghe of endangering the security of the country by giving away too much to win peace with the rebels.