The long anticipated elections in Sri Lanka in early April may have ended a bitter political test of strength in the country but seemed to have perhaps complicated the leadership’s main challenge of continuing the lengthy peace process with Tamil rebels in the civil war of more than 20 years.

But following a meeting with the President and other senior Sri Lankan officials, the Norwegian delegation head, Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgessen indicated “It might take some time before the parties are in a position to return to the negotiating table.”

The April elections resulted in more than 51% supporting the President and her SNP party and 42% for the party of the former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The South Asian island country of nearly 20 million has been wracked by conflict since the 1980s which has cost an estimated 60,000 lives and hundreds of thousands of Tamil and other refugees.

But in the aftermath of the elections, many observers felt that the background for the peace process was more uncertain than ever despite the apparent victory by the forces of the President in overcoming those of former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in the elections.

The President in November 2003 had ousted key Ministers in the Wickremesinghe government over the conduct of the peace negotiations, which the Prime Minister had accelerated. But her ruling SNP coalition gained only 105 seats in the 225-member Parliament and her party’s merger with the ardently pro-nationalist JVP was seem as perhaps further undermining the negotiating process.

The political situation in the country was also affected by the bloody conflict which erupted among Tamil rebel factions at roughly the same time as the dissolution of the parliament, elections and assumption of power by a new Government in Colombo in April.

In April the verbal conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the forces of General Karuna broke out into armed clashes in the Jaffna peninsula, with some Government forces caught in the cross-fire between the two. President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who also reserved the post of Defence Minister for herself, said that Government forces would react to establish order if necessary. The fighting was reported to have been accompanied by waves of new refugees fleeing the conflict zones. But the intervention by Government forces would also further jeopardise the cease-fire in existence between the official and rebel sides for some two years.

And it would cast into further doubt the peace negotiations between the rebels and government. They in any case would be complicated by the divisions now apparent in the rebel ranks, posing the question of negotiating with different insurgent factions.

The new Government in Colombo had sought to resume the talks following the political campaign and elections. But new Government policy orientation toward the talks was also immediately uncertainty since President Kumaratunga had first sacked key Government Ministers, then the Prime Minister and Parliament over the conduct of the negotiations, in which she had claimed the previous Government had made too many concessions to the Tigers.

The advent of a new more hard-line nationalist Government siding with the President after the election promised to make any resumption of negotiations, the cease-fire and peace process more uncertaint and difficult.