Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

394 • LIBERATION TIGERS OF TAMIL EELAMKumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe, the formeraccusing the latter of too much leniency in dealing with the LTTE.This feud impeded negotiations with the LTTE and led to the collapseof the cease-fire. The LTTE indicated by September 2002 thatit was ready to accept autonomy instead of independence. In April2003 the LTTE suspended negotiations but then resumed them,proposing in November the formation of an interim self-governingauthority for the LTTE-occupied areas. However, on 4 November2003, while Prime Minister Wickramasinghe was visiting the UnitedStates, President Kumaratunga fired the government’s ministers ofdefense, interior affairs, and mass media, assuming these portfoliosherself, and then deploying troops throughout the country to secureher effective takeover. On 7 February 2004 President Kumaratungadissolved the Sri Lankan parliament and called for new elections on 2April 2004, in which the United People’s Freedom Alliance, formedfrom a coalition of Kumaratunga’s original Sri Lanka Freedom Party(SLFP) and the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), won 105seats to Wickramasinghe’s United National Front Party’s 82 seats inthe 225-seat body. The new government refused to return to negotiationswith the LTTE despite the offer of $4.5 billion in foreign aidcontingent on the resumption of talks.In the presidential elections of 17 November 2005, the SLFP candidate,who was the incumbent prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa,campaigning on a promise to toughen actions against the LTTE,narrowly defeated Ranil Wickramasinghe, who had promised toresume negotiations with the LTTE, by 51.3 to 48.3 percent of thevote. Ironically, the defeat of Wickramasinghe, whom many regardedas taking a more conciliatory line toward the LTTE, was helped bythe LTTE’s imposition of an electoral boycott in the regions it controlled,preventing many moderate Tamils from voting for him. Afew days after President Rajapaksa assumed office on 19 November2005, the LTTE repudiated the 2001 cease-fire and resumed hostilities.Until the end of the cease-fire, the SLMM reported numerousviolations by both sides, with more than 600 people killed in the lastyear alone, half of whom were civilians, but the overall levels of violencewere much lower than in the periods preceding and followingthe cease-fire.During 2005 the number of incidents rose to 62, including 19bombings, six kidnappings, six murders by stabbing, one robbery,