Colombo, Sri Lanka - A group of powerful Buddhist monks and high priests stepped up pressure on Sri Lanka's president Thursday to withdraw from a plan to share tsunami aid with Tamil Tigers rebels, which they say will help the guerrillas achieve their aim of a separate Tamil state.
A spokesman for the monks said President Chandrika Kumaratunga has 24 hours to drop her plan for a joint aid mechanism to ensure relief reaches government- and rebel-controlled areas of the country.
"Or we will be forced to resort to undemocratic moves," said monk Galagodaatte Gnanasara of the National Heritage Party. He did not elaborate.
In 1959, a Buddhist monk shot dead then premier S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, Kumaratunga's father, because of his attempts to grant concessions to minority Tamils who are mostly Hindu.
Later Thursday, the high priests of Sri Lanka's four highest Buddhist orders said they would issue a religious decree against Kumaratunga if she did not immediately halt the joint aid distribution plan.
While such a decree would not be constitutionally binding, it would compel monks to withdraw from all functions in government _ including accepting alms and assistance _ and would likely cause a huge loss of respect for Kumaratunga in Sri Lanka where 70 percent of the population is Buddhist and where the monks wield tremendous power.
Gnanasara also urged the Marxist People's Liberation Front, or JVP, to carry out its threat to pull out of the coalition government if Kumaratunga goes ahead with the aid-sharing plan, leaving her Sri Lanka Freedom Party with a minority government at risk of collapse.
"Instead of making hollow threats the JVP should leave the government," he said.
The monks and the Marxists have demanded that Kumaratunga drop the proposed aid deal, arguing that it would help the Tamil Tiger rebels achieve their goal of carving out a separate state.
But Kumaratunga says the deal is necessary to help tens of thousands of desperate tsunami survivors in the Tamil-majority north and east, parts of which are under guerrilla control. The Tigers have complained that aid is not getting to Tamil areas fast enough.
The devastating Dec. 26 tsunami killed at least 31,000 people in Sri Lanka.
Elsewhere in the island nation, protests took place both for and against the aid-sharing proposal.
A senior monk, who entered his fourth day Thursday of refusing all food and liquids, was risking his life to protest the plan, Gnanasara said. Doctors said Omalpe Sobitha's blood pressure was low and his pulse weak, he said.
Witnesses said Sobitha, who began his fast Monday sitting in a lotus position, was now reclining on a temporary stage surrounded by saffron-robed Buddhist monks chanting blessings near the Temple of the Tooth, one of Buddhist most sacred shrines.
Meanwhile, hundreds of civil society and peace activists demonstrated in the capital, Colombo, urging Kumaratunga to sign the deal.
"We ask the president to sign on the dotted line without any fear and not to be afraid of a small group of extremists," said Kumar Rupasinghe, a prominent peace activist.
The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. The conflict killed nearly 65,000 people before a cease-fire in 2002 which has largely held. However, subsequent peace talks broke down in 2003.
The Marxists, backed by the monks, led failed insurrections to seize power in 1971 and 1987 in which some 70,000 people died. In 1994, the Marxists renounced violence and joined mainstream politics.