Colombo: The stalled talks to end the political power struggle between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will resume tomorrow (Feb 3, 2004), officials on both sides said today (Feb 2).

A four-member panel will meet after a week's delay and look at fresh proposals made by the Prime Minister about sharing Defence ministry responsibilities, the officials said.

The talks are being resumed in the backdrop of Kumaratunga's party strengthening its ties with the radical leftist JVP (Janata Vimukthi Perumana), or People's Liberation Party.

Four minor parties, which are already in the larger People's Alliance coalition led by Kumaratunga, joined the new alliance with the JVP while the traditional leftist parties, the Communist Party and the LSSP, or the Equal Society Party, stayed away.

The traditional leftists accuse Kumaratunga's new alliance of being hard-line nationalists and lacking a coherent policy to end the island's drawn out Tamil separatist conflict.

Kumaratunga is locked in a power struggle with Wickremesinghe, who is from a rival party, over moves to end three decades of ethnic conflict which has left over 60,000 people dead.

There have been conflicting signals from the President's office about a compromise while the Prime Minister's office insists that it was still possible for them to agree on a formula acceptable to both.