SL rebels say peace envoy visit to yield little

Colombo, May 24: Norway's peace envoy today flew to Sri Lanka for a fresh round of separate meetings with government officials and the Tamil Tigers, but the rebels played down hopes of breaking a deadlock over stalled peace talks.

The government hopes special envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer and Norwegian peace mediator Erik Solheim, due to join him on Friday, can cajole the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) back to talks they pulled out of indefinitely amid an upsurge in violence.

But as the Tigers prepared to bury one of their top commanders in the restive east after a weekend assassination they blame on the army, they say any peace talks are a long way off.

''At the moment there is a lot of violence and the LTTE's senior members are being targeted and being killed. We don't think that Hanssen-Bauer's visit is going to make any big difference,'' S Puleedevan, head of the Tigers' peace secretariat said by telephone from the rebels' northern base, Kilinochchi.

''Even though we are fully committed to the peace process, what's going on on the ground is totally against the peace process and the ceasefire agreement,'' he added, saying talks were out ''until these extrajudicial killings stop and a conducive atmosphere is created''.

Diplomats said Hanssen-Bauer's visit would focus on an coming meeting of Sri Lanka's main donors in Tokyo later this month, at which the United States, Japan, the European Union and Norway will assess the precarious peace process. He is due to visit Kilinochchi on Friday.

The European Union is expected to rubber-stamp a terror ban against the Tigers later this month, seen as a diplomatic slap in the face for the rebels.

Puleedevan says talks are unlikely to resume this year after a sharp spike in attacks and clashes that have killed more than 270 people since early April in what truce monitors and the Tigers say is now a ''low-intensity war''.

The Tigers accuse the military of helping a breakaway group of former comrades to kill their fighters. They say continued attacks are the single biggest hurdle to resuming peace talks aimed at permanently ending a two-decade civil war that killed more than 64,000 people.

A 2002 truce still technically holds and the government says it is only retaliating in limited bursts.

But artillery, mortar exchanges and firefights are now commonplace near forward defence lines in the north and east, where the rebels want to carve out a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils, and many residents fear all-out war.

Claymore fragmentation mine attacks by suspected Tigers are also common. Three military personnel were killed in a blast in the north-central district of Vavuniya early today.

Many local stock market investors are holding off until the uncertainty clears, while some companies are delaying investment projects in the billion economy. Some ordinary Tamils already displaced by years of war are trying to flee.

Police arrested 24 people overnight as they sought to smuggle themselves over to India in fishing boats. Hundreds more are awaiting their turn in the northwestern district of Mannar.

''There are people waiting for boats to leave for India due to the threats from the LTTE,'' said Bathiyatissa Thennakoon, Mannar's senior superintendent of police.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says more than 1,000 people have fled to India so far this year.

REUTERS

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