COLOMBO, Jan. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse had failed to get the Indian backing for his policy on the separatist armed conflict with the Tamil Tigers, the main opposition charged here Tuesday.

    Rajitha Senaratne, member of the parliament opposition United National Party (UNP), said a four-day visit to India by President Mahinda Rajapakse was aimed at getting the Indian endorsement of his policy to look for a solution to the separatist armed conflict while maintaining the unitary status of the island.

    Senaratne said that the Indian leaders had told Rajapakse to solve the island's ethnic question in an undivided Sri Lanka.

    He added that the said Indian policy was very much consistent with the policy of the UNP.

    Rajapakse, who was elected in mid November last year, made his first official visit to India from Dec. 26 to Dec. 30, 2005.

    "The Indian government was influenced by the politicians in Tamil Nadu state not to back Sri Lankan president," Senaratne said.

    The southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu is home to 55 million Tamils who have links with the Sri Lankan Tamils.

    The Indian leaders told Rajapakse to start talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels but gave no indication that Sri Lanka's giant neighbor would shed its hands-off policy on Sri Lanka's ethnic separatist conflict.

    India had been much involved in the Sri Lankan conflict since the mid 1980s until the early 1990s when its Peace Keeping Force stationed in Sri Lanka's northeast was asked to leave by the then Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa. Enditem