The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) may walk out of talks with President Ranil Wickremesinghe as there has been no visible progress on reconciliation efforts, the party has said.

Representatives of the TNA and Wickremesinghe met on 4 January for a second round of talks after the President invited representatives of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka to hold talks to resolve some of the outstanding issues they faced.

However, TNA MP M.A Sumanthiran who was part of the TNA delegation said no progress was made during the talks on the many issues faced by the Tamils and President Wickremesinghe merely reiterated what was already discussed at the previous meeting held on 13 December 2022.

While the TNA is set to meet with Wickremesinghe for a marathon round of talks from 10 - 12 January after the latter pledged to resolve their pending issues before the nation’s 75th Independence Day falling on February 4, the TNA is set to submit a report to the President on the issues faced by Tamils in the North and East. According to Sumanthiran, the report will be submitted at the meeting on 10 January.

Following this, the MP said the TNA will decide if to continue with the talks based on the response they receive from President Wickremesinghe. “The TNA will be forced to decide if to continue or not with these talks thereafter,” Sumanthiran said.