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Tigers outfox dove to dim Lankan peace hopes

AFP, Colombo
Sri Lanka's Tiger rebels deliberately ditched the man who signed a truce with them and cleared the way for his hawkish rival to win the presidency in a calculated move that has dashed peace hopes, analysts said Friday.
The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) prevented Tamils from participating in Thursday's presidential election thereby blocking votes that many expected to hand victory to opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.
"What the Tigers have done is to ensure Mr. Wickremesinghe's defeat," said political analyst and former air force chief Harry Gunatillake. "They may have calculated that he was the
more formidable man to deal with."
Wickremesinghe entered a ceasefire with the LTTE in 2002 and lost his job as prime minister. President Chandrika Kumaratunga sacked him, charging he had jeopardised national security by inking the truce.
Instead of delivering the minority Tamil votes to Wickremesinghe, the Tigers staged a virtual boycott and let in the hardline nationalist candidate Mahinda Rajapakse, the incumbent prime minister.
Rajapakse's tough approach to peace appears to better suit the Tigers' own reluctance to return to talks.
Gunatillake noted the Tigers have struggled to control a damaging split and want more time to rally their
ranks.
Asked if he felt let down by the Tigers, Wickremesinghe said: "I had no deal with them to feel let down."
Wickremesinghe, who had earned a reputation as a keen strategist and a shrewd negotiator, appeared to have been led up the garden path by the Tigers and then ditched.
"I was never expecting to win with the votes in Jaffna," Wickremesinghe told AFP as it became clear that the Tamils were staying at home. "If you can't win in the (Sinhalese majority) south, you can't win the country," he said.
Diplomats involved in Sri Lanka's Norwegian-backed peace process had banked on Wickremes-inghe winning the presidency to inject new dynamism
into a moribund peace initiative.
However, his defeat was seen putting the clock back on the peace process.
The new president has vowed he will not turn the country into a federal state and is against power sharing with minority Tamils.
"What was important about Wickremesinghe's plan was power sharing," said Sunanda Deshapriya, director at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) think tank. "All that would be in question now."
The Tiger move to keep away voters is exactly what Rajapakse's camp had wanted but could not achieve even through a supreme court petition.