Lawmaker Slain After Signing of Sri Lanka Pact

A governing party Parliament member was assassinated today as he returned home from the signing of an Indian-brokered peace accord condemned by broad sectors of the Sinhalese majority.

Police said an undetermined number of Sinhalese men stopped the car of lawmaker Jinadasa Weerasinghe as he was en route to his home in Tangalle, 90 miles southeast of Colombo, where the pact to end the rebellion by the Tamil minority was signed Wednesday.

Weerasinghe, 58, and his teen-age son were shot, police said. The parliamentarian died in a hospital and his son was in critical condition.

Indian Troops Move In

Indian troops, meanwhile, continued to move into rebel areas in northern Sri Lanka to disarm Tamil rebels and enforce the accord. About 3,000 Indian troops landed in the northern Jaffna peninsula Thursday as a peacekeeping force. (Story, Page 6.)

Weerasinghe was a member of the United National Party of President Junius R. Jayewardene, who signed the peace accord with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The pact, aimed at ending the four-year insurgency by minority Tamils, called for a cease-fire beginning today and the rebels’ subsequent surrender of weapons.

Liberation Front Blamed

Police blamed the outlawed National Liberation Front for the assassination. The Marxist group tried to overthrow the government in 1971 and was crushed at the time. It reportedly has been regrouping in the Sinhalese heartland in recent months.

Meanwhile, the commander of the stronghold of the most powerful Tamil rebel group said today his fighters would not surrender to Indian troops without direct orders from his leaders, who are still in New Delhi.