CLOMBO, July 24, Sri Lanka and India have agreed on a plan aimed at ending the Island’s Tamil separatist conflict, which has killed more than 6,000 people in the past four years, a senior minister said today.

Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi will arrive in Colombo in the middle of next week to sign the agreement, which would give autonomy to northern and eastern areas where most Tamils live, Sri Lanka’s National Security Minister, Lalith Athulathmudali, told Reuters.

India, home to 50 million Tamils, has been mediating in the conflict in which guerrillas have been fighting for a separate state for majority Tamils in the Sinha-lese-dominated Island.

Political sources said the plan was approved last night by members of Parliament of the ruling United National Party at a meeting with President Junius Jayewardene in the chair.

Athulathmudali said the Indian High Commissioner (Ambassador) in Colombo, Jyotindra Nath Dixit, would fly to New Delhi today to tell Gandhi Sri Lanka has approved the peace plan.

The main opposition party and a group of influential Sinhalese administrative Tamil linguistic unit.

The government had earlier opposed their call for a merger of the Tamil dominated Northern Province with the eastern province, where Tamils, Sinhalese and Moslems live in almost equal numbers.

Political sources said the plan provides for a referendum to be held in the eastern province within one year to determine whether its people favor a merger with the north,

While the council would have autonomous powers, the Central government would retain control of national issues like foreign affairs and administration of the strategic port of Trincomalee in the east, the sources said:

Former Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike said her opposition freedom party was “deeply shocked” that the government has agreed to link the northern and eastern provinces under the council:

She charged that the plan was “a surrender of the sovereign rights of the nation and has disastrous consequences for the Sinhalese and Moslems:’

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 31, 1987