Sri Lanka to field 50,000 police, deploy army in northeast for presidential election

Sri Lanka will field 50,000 police nationwide and deploy military troops in the volatile northeast during the Nov. 17 presidential election, officials said Friday.A 2002 cease-fire between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels has been increasingly strained by violence, especially in the northeast, parts of which have long been under rebel control.Sri Lanka also has a history of violent elections and vote fraud. Police spokesman Rienzie Perera said uniformed and plainclothes officers will conduct vehicle and foot patrols to check for signs of conflict or attempts to sabotage voting.Perera said military troops will be responsible for security in the northeast, an area dominated by ethnic minority Tamils and the center of the Tamil Tigers' two-decade war against the government.The conflict, fueled by Tamils' complaints of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese, claimed about 65,000 lives before the government and rebels signed a Norway-brokered cease-fire in February 2002.

However, subsequent peace talks have stalled due to government-rebel disagreements over postwar power-sharing.Scores of people have been killed since the cease-fire, with attacks escalating after a factional split among the Tigers in March 2004. The government and rebels blame each other for the trouble.Past Sri Lankan elections have been plagued by violence and vote-rigging. In 2001, 61 people were killed in the days leading up to a parliamentary poll.

Meanwhile, the European Union Friday expressed ``frustration'' at the lack of progress in implementing its recommendations made after observing three previous elections. John Cushnahan, the head of a 72-member EU team, told reporters in the capital of Colombo that the union is ``clearly frustrated with the lack of follow-up to our previous election observation missions.''

He had expressed similar views after the April 2004 Parliamentary polls and warned that the EU was unlikely to send another mission if the government failed to set up an independent election commission, draw up a code of conduct for political parties, and take tougher action to stop election-related violence.There are 13 presidential candidates in the coming elections, but the main contest will be between Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is an opposition leader and former prime minister. Independent observers have said that conditions were better during last year's parliamentary election, except in parts of rebel-controlled areas in the northeast. Five people died.