Sri Lanka's main Tamil party threatened on Friday to pull out of reconciliation talks if the government does not within two weeks respond to proposals on devolution of powers, a core issue that fuelled a quarter-century civil war.

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The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the political proxy of the now-defeated Tamil Tiger separatists, accused President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government of carrying out a "deceitful process" in talks which have reached their tenth round.

"While attempting to show the world that the government was engaged in a political process as an integral part of reconciliation, what the government was really engaged in was no more than a mere facade," the TNA said in a statement.

The government in turn blamed the TNA for trying to force its demands without wider consultation, and moved to appoint a committee to handle the talks in parliament, where Rajapaksa's ruling alliance has a two-thirds majority.

"We do not think that the ultimatum delivered to the government by the TNA, which is tantamount to the attitude portrayed by the LTTE, is at all helpful or constructive," Irrigation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva, a senior presidential ally involved in the talks, said in a statement.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) emerged as the most ruthless of several armed groups that began fighting in the 1970s for a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils, in response to political marginalisation and ethnic violence under successive governments ruled by the Sinhalese majority.

Rajapaksa's government crushed the LTTE and killed its leadership in May 2009, winning what was one of Asia's longest-running civil wars at almost 26 years.

Since then, Western governments including Britain and the United States, and ally India, have pushed Rajapaksa to engage with the TNA to strike a political deal acceptable to Tamils, with the aim of forestalling renewed conflict.

Government: TNA too fast
Most Tamil parties have clamoured for decades for more direct local control over land, police and government finances, and the TNA is no exception. It has been emboldened by its victory in local government elections in July.

The TNA, the United States, Britain and India have all accused the government of dragging its feet on reconciliation. A possible war crimes probe is one lever the West has been exploiting to push for reconciliation.

De Silva accused the TNA of making an unreasonable demand to settle the political question.

"It is certainly not possible, nor is it consistent with the national interest, to make a final pronouncement on all these crucial issues hastily and without wider consultation," De Silva said, referring to the TNA's two-week deadline.

Rajapaksa has long said Sri Lanka must find a local solution and not adopt an external one, a reference to the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord which New Delhi all but forced on Colombo.

It prescribed a type of federal constitutional devolution which became law but never enacted in practice.

Rajapaksa's ruling coalition includes nationalist Buddhist parties which are vehemently opposed to any kind of devolution to Tamil areas, and could easily whip up popular opposition to it among the president's core rural Sinhalese constituency.

Source: Reuters