Sri Lanka can forge lasting peace with the Tamil Tigers and propel its economy to double-digit growth if its two main parties join forces, former prime minister and presidential hopeful Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Saturday.
Right-of-centre market favourite Wickremesinghe is set to go head-to-head with Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse for the presidency in a November 17 vote seen as too close to call, and says broad political consensus is the key to a deal with the feared Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
"Sri Lanka can take off in the next 6 to 7 years. This is why I'm anxious the two main parties should get together," Wickremesinghe told Reuters in his first election interview between rally stops at this beach resort on Sri Lanka's palm-lined, tsunami-battered south coast.
"Not (just) for the sake of peace but also to have an agenda for 20 years so that there will be certainty as far as investors and the average citizens of our country are concerned," he said.
Wickremesinghe, who brokered Sri Lanka's 2002 truce with the rebels while serving as prime minister, has proposed an alliance between his United National Party and outgoing President Chandrika Kumaratunga's ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).
"The basic principle in politics is that before you cut a deal with the LTTE, you have to cut a deal with the SLFP," he said.
Sri Lanka's protracted peace process is at its lowest ebb since the cease-fire, and how to permanently end a two-decade war that has killed over 64,000 people is a central election issue.
Wickremesinghe is seen as the best placed candidate to reach a deal and the local stock market has soared in recent weeks on expectations he will win.
Rajapakse is also campaigning on a ticket of peace and the economy, but he has sealed election pacts with hard-line Marxists and Buddhist monks who demand a tough line in any peace bid with the Tigers and are scaring off moderate voters.
Sri Lanka's economic prospects are directly tied to peace. With the $20 billion economy creaking under the strain of high international oil prices and double-digit inflation, whoever wins must cope with hundreds of thousands of tsunami and war displaced who need new homes and jobs.
Wickremesinghe last month pitched a populist manifesto peppered with subsidies in a major policy shift to target the masses who voted his government out in 2004.
He pledged to create 3 million jobs and double economic growth to 10 percent a year for a decade, and is banking on foreign investment more than tripling to $1 billion a year to meet his growth target.
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