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Karuna set for party politics
By Chris Kamalendran
The break-away faction of the LTTE led by V. Muralitharan alias Karuna is set to officially register as a political party with the Elections Commissioner. After three rounds of talks held in Colombo, the new party known as LTTE (Karuna Wing), led by Karuna himself has picked its office bearers including a seven-member central committee, according to a Tamil politician assisting in the formation of the party.

Two close associates of Karuna known as Maran and Kuganesan have been picked as the General Secretary and Treasurer respectively. Kuganesan had been in charge of financial activities of Karuna.

At least 35 members of the group had met in Colombo to finalise the political party and prepared the letter to be sent to the Elections Commissioner which has been signed by Maran. They had decided to select the fish as the symbol of the party with its colour being red and black, but already the fish symbol is being used by the Ceylon Democratic Unity Alliance.

Before finalising the decision to form the political party Karuna had also held several rounds of talks with the EPDP leader, Douglas Devananda. Mr. Devananda told The Sunday Times that Karuna's decision to join the political mainstream was similar to how other former militant groups entered politics in 1987 after the signing of the Indo-Lanka peace agreement.

“I advised him to remain in the main- stream of politics by adopting similar policies as of our party and not to go on the offensive,” Mr. Devananda said. Tamil political sources said that similar splits in Tamil militant groups or political parties have been observed in the past. The EPRLF and TULF are among these parties which have had splinter groups.

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