Sri Lanka's main Muslim party said yesterday it will boycott a landmark tsunami aid-sharing deal between the government and rebels that is seen as a prelude to resuming stalled peace negotiations. The announcement compounded worries for the shaky minority government.

The Norwegian-brokered deal signed on Friday between Colombo and the Tamil Tigers has been widely hailed as a prelude to restarting peace talks between the two sides.

But Muslims said they feared it would make them more marginalised.

The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) party said they had been ignored in the deal clinched in secret despite Muslims being a "principle stakeholder" in embattled regions.

"We want a review of the joint mechanism and if not we will not participate in it," SLMC leader Rauf Hakeem said.

"We must have some mechanism (to deliver tsunami aid), but this is not the way to go about it."

Hakeem said their demands went beyond mere representation in the three-tier mechanism set up on Friday and they wanted to be recognised as a key stakeholder.

"We have been relegated to a secondary minority community, but everyone knows without our co-operation this cannot work."

Under the deal, the government and the Tigers will jointly handle millions of dollars in foreign aid for survivors of the December 26 tsunami, which killed at least 31,000 people and displaced one million in the country.

Hakeem said the party will use "non-co-operation" as a political tool to force the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government to review the deal.

Muslims are Sri Lanka's second-largest minority after Tamils and account for about 7.5 per cent of the country's 19.5m population. The majority Sinhalese represent 70pc while the rest are ethnic Tamils.

Hakeem, who is a member of parliament and has six legislators with him in the 225-member national assembly where President Chandrika Kumaratunga's government is a minority, said he was asking other Muslims to unite with him.

Most of the tsunami destruction was in the embattled north and east, much of which is dominated by the Tigers.

But Muslims say more than half the victims were from their community and therefore they should have a greater voice in aid distribution. The Muslims fear such an agreement would ignore their aspirations.

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