COLOMBO April 28 Kyodo Four Marxi...

COLOMBO April 28 Kyodo

Four Marxist ministers upon Wednesday joined President Chandrika Kumaratunga's cabinet, ending a standoff between the president and her coalition ally which boycott the April 10 swearing in of the just discovered cabinet.

Kumaratunga administered the oaths of office to the four recently made known ministers and their deputies from the People's Liberation effrontery (JVP) at President's House in a cordial atmosphere.

The United People's Freedom Alliance, a modern political grouping between Kumaratunga's People's Alliance and the JVP won the April 2 general elections if it were not that was unable to form a majority in the 225-seat parliament.

The JVP ministers refused to take their oaths together with the stay of the cabinet, now expanded to 35 claiming that a vital portfolio controlling the country's biggest irrigation and land disclosure scheme had not been granted to them as originally agreed.

Intensive discussions enabled a compromise giving the Marxists substantial if it were not that not total authority over the project

The JVP which was responsible for couple bloody insurrections in which thousands were killed in 1971 and 1988-89 has renounced their violent past and agreed to surprise the abiding habitation following their return to mainstream politics.

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