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Message: <blockquote data-quote="x-pert" data-source="post: 1273689" data-attributes="member: 837">[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]  COLOMBO: A peace panel including ruling party politicians told Sri Lanka's president to devolve more power to minority Tamils as a first step to resolving the island's long-running ethnic war, officials said on Thursday.      The recommendation to President Mahinda Rajapakse was made by a panel comprising ruling party politicians and their allies which has been mulling peace options for two years.      The suggestion, however, falls far short of demands by Tamil Tiger rebels for full independence and is nothing new -- devolution is part of existing provisions in the Sri Lankan constitution that have never been put into practice.      "The proposal of the APRC (All Party Representative Committee) is to implement the devolution proposals introduced to the constitution in 1987, but never implemented in full," a presidential spokesman said.      In 1987, the Sri Lankan government took the decision to share power with minority Tamils in the north and east, but never fully devolved political power.      In addition, the Tamil Tigers already control a large part of the island's north and run a de facto separate state -- meaning that in many Tamil areas the president has no power to devolve anyway.      The president's all-party peace panel has come in for stiff criticism for displaying no sense of urgency and having little or no clout.      The panel got off to a bad start when the island's opposition parties walked out, and the Tamil Tigers were also excluded from the beginning.      Its recommendation comes in the wake of Rajapakse's decision to pull out of a 2002 Norwegian-brokered ceasefire with the Tamil Tigers earlier this month.      This week the president insisted he did not believe in a military solution to the war and wanted a political solution, although at the same time fighting has been escalating in the north with the Sri Lankan army claiming it is killing hundreds of rebels.      The decades-old conflict has left well over 60,000 people dead.Source: Times of India[/FONT]</blockquote>

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