New Nordic peace envoy visits Sri Lanka before talks

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

COLOMBO, April 3: Norway's new special peace envoy to Sri Lanka began a four-day visit to the island today to pave the way for a second round of emergency talks in Geneva this month to shore up a 2002 truce, officials said.

Jon Hanssen-Bauer, a peace adviser at Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is due to meet President Rajapakse, political leaders and the Tamil Tigers. His predecessor, Norwegian development minister Erik Solheim, will join him on Thursday.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have warned there will be no progress at the upcoming talks unless the government makes good on a pledge to disarm a breakaway faction they say are attacking them, and will likely raise the issue.

The Tigers are locked in a bitter feud with a group of breakaway rebels led by top former commander Colonel Karuna, who was widely seen as reclusive rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran's No.2 until a split in 2004.

The rebels accuse the military of helping the Karuna faction attack its fighters, and analysts fear the issue could rekindle a spate of deadly attacks by suspected Tigers against the military in December and January and possibly spill over into renewed civil war.

Karuna says his men will only disarm if the Tigers do too, and vows to fight back attacked. The Karuna issue is expected to dominate the April 19-21 talks in Switzerland.

More than 64,000 people died during two-decades of fighting, and hundreds of thousands of people -- many since battered again by Asia's tsunami -- are still displaced or living in camps years later.

REUTERS

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