By Tom Rachman
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, Nov. 2, 1999; 7:57 a.m. EST

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka –– Gunmen killed a Tamil member of Sri Lanka's parliament and his driver today, surrounding his van from three sides on a Colombo street and pumping bullets through the windows.

Ramesh Nadarajah of the Eelam People's Democratic Party was driving toward his office in Colombo when the attackers pulled up and began shooting, police said.

The attackers surrounded the white Toyota van and began firing automatic rifles, shattering windows, and spattering the seats with blood. Two civilians thought to be the only witnesses were wounded in the shooting, police said.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, and unlike most such killings, police did not immediately blame the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels, who are accused of assassinating Tamil moderates who challenge their claim to speak for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority.

The Tamil Tigers have been battling since 1983 for an independent homeland in the north and east of this island-nation off the coast of India. More than 58,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

On July 29, a suicide bomber assassinated a leading Tamil moderate and human rights activist, Neelan Tiruchelvam, also by attacking him in his car as he drove to work.

Members of Nadarajah's party would not speculate on a possible motive.

"We cannot definitely say who was responsible for the killing," said S. Sivadasan, a member of parliament in Nadarajah's party. "There was no known motive and police investigations are continuing."

Analysts noted that there had been a recent ideological split within the Eelam People's Democratic Party. Nadarajah had begun to openly criticize his own party in the popular Tamil-language newspaper he edited, and was advocating support for the Tamil militants, one analyst close to Tamil sources said on condition of anonymity.

Nadarajah's party was formerly a rebel group that entered the political mainstream in 1990. It is the biggest Tamil party in parliament with seven seats, and belongs to the ruling People's Alliance coalition.

Nadarajah, who edited the weekly Thinamurasu, was a member of parliament for Jaffna, a city in the country's northern peninsula considered the center of Tamil culture.

The killing came just a few weeks before President Chandrika Kumaratunga seeks a new mandate in an election to be held Dec. 21, nearly a year before schedule. A separate election for parliament is expected to follow a few months later.

Despite his seat in parliament, Nadarajah was more a newspaperman at heart than a politician, experts said. Since taking over the paper, he had cranked up the circulation, eventually making it the country's most widely read Tamil-language weekly.

Nadarajah avoided the public spotlight and disliked being photographed, said political analyst Manoranjan Rajasingam. The address of his newspaper was never published and few even knew what he looked like.

Over the past year, the ideology of his newspaper changed, veering toward Tamil nationalism and support for the Tamil Tigers, and away from cooperation with the majority Sinhalese parties, he said.

"Especially at election time, the paper would have been a very potent force in terms of who the Tamils voted for," Rajasingam said. "It reflected Tamil opinion and reinforced Tamil opinion."