Cabinet formation to be delayed, negotiations are on

OCT 17: Sri Lankan president has delayed naming a new cabinet as she is negotiating with smaller parties demanding a greater role in her t...

OCT 17: Sri Lankan president has delayed naming a new cabinet as she is negotiating with smaller parties demanding a greater role in her tenuous coalition.

quot;The cabinet will be sworn in on Saturday the 21st,quot; A.H.M.Fowzie, the outgoing Transport Minister, told Reuters on telephone on Tuesday.

The swearing-in ceremony had originally been expected to take place on Wednesday, when the new Parliament will meet for the first time to choose a speaker and other officials.

Neither President Chandrika Kumaratunga8217;s People8217;s Alliance nor the main opposition United National Party won a working majority in last week8217;s election which was marred by violence and ballot tampering.

Kumaratunga cobbled together a coalition to give the People8217;s Alliance a slim majority, but Fowzie said the coalition partners were still negotiating over cabinet portfolios.

quot;The small parties are making big demands,quot; he said in an apparent reference to the Eelam People8217;s Democratic Party EPDP 8212; a former Tamil rebel group 8212; and the largely Muslim National Unity Alliance NUA.

The EPDP has five seats and NUA 10, including six on the PA ticket, making them indispensable to Kumaratunga, whose party has only 107 of Parliament8217;s 225 members.

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Fowzie said the coalition partners were also haggling over who would get the post of junior Defence Minister, a key position in the war-torn country.

quot;There is some trouble over the defence ministry,quot; Fowzie added.

Speculation has been mounting over whether junior Defence Minister Anuruddha Ratwatte would keep his job after he was publicly accused by his own party of vote rigging in the central district of Kandy, which suffered the worst violence on election day.

Ratwatte has denied the charges made by People8217;s Alliance general secretary D M Jayaratne and NUA leader Rauf Hakeem.

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Kumaratunga, who is expected to retain the senior defence portfolio, has vowed to crush the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam LTTE who are fighting for a separate state for minority Tamils in the country8217;s north and east.

She has promised to pass a new constitution giving more power to the regions, including one controlled by Tamils, to give them an alternative to the rebels.

More than 61,000 people have died in the war since 1983.