A pro-government Tamil party in Sri Lanka has initiated a move to form a new alliance of political parties representing the minority community.
A committee was formed to work out an agreement where several Tamil political parties would be banded together for the alliance, said Nelson Edirisingha, whose Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) the main backer of the plan.
The committee would come up with a joint political communique within a week and the formation of the alliance would be announced thereafter, said Edirisingha, EPDP spokesman.
EPDP leader Douglas Devananda is a central minister.
The main aim of the coalition is to work towards a political solution for the ethnic minority through the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC), a process that was boycotted by main Tamil party TNA.
A feature of this alliance is that all constituent parties remain opposed to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).
The TNA has stayed away from the PSC claiming that the move was nothing but a stalling tactic by the government.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has made repeated requests to the TNA to attend the PSC which was also boycotted by the main Sinhala national parties - UNP and the JVP.
A meeting of the new alliance held in Jaffna on Saturday.
Besides EPDP, the meeting was attended by representatives from the Tamil United Liberation Front, Eelam People's Revolutionary Front, Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation.
Edirisingha said several leftist parties such as the Communist Party of Sri Lanka and the Lanka Samasamaja Party also participated in the meeting.
