S Lanka rebels refuse to meet government at Oslo

OSLO/COLOMBO June 8 (Reuters) Sri Lanka's government said Tamil Tiger rebels had refused to meet them at talks in Oslo today, with Norway saying the meeting had effectively ended.

The development is a body blow to prospects of comprehensive peace talks and came as new violence on the island left at least three dead. More than 400 people have been killed since early April in Sri Lanka's north and east.

The meeting, the first between the two sides since February, was to only centre on the role of the Nordic mission monitoring what is left of a 2002 ceasefire.

''The Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan government have called off their meeting in Norway without sitting together,'' Norwegian government spokesman Espen Gullikstad told Reuters.

The reasons would be explained at a press conference at 0030 hrs IST, he said.

Both sides were continuing to meet with Norwegian diplomats, he said. Development Minister Erik Solheim, who brokered the original truce, was headed to the venue.

The Sri Lankan government said it had been informed on arrival at the talks that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) delegation would not meet them.

''The Sri Lankan delegation was informed by the Norwegians that the LTTE had declined to meet,'' a government statement said. ''The Norwegian government representatives themselves expressed complete surprise by the stance taken by the LTTE despite all the background preparations made by the Norwegian facilitators.'' The Tigers were not immediately available for comment.

Earlier in the day, Tamil daily newspaper Uthayan reported that Tiger political leader S.P. Thamilselvan was refusing to meet the government delegation as it was only led by a civil servant and not a government minister.

The government said it had been told that the presence of nationals from European Union nations Sweden, Finland and Denmark in the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) was objectionable after the EU banned the Tigers as terrorists last month.

If violence continues, many fear that in time it could spiral back to the full scale civil war that killed more than 64,000 people and devastated the island's minority Tamil dominated north and east, where the Tigers want a separate homeland.

REUTERS KD PM2002