Sri Lanka talks start and stall, violence rages

Colombo, Jun 8: Sri Lanka's government said Tamil Tiger rebels had refused to meet them at talks in Oslo today, while at least three people were killed as the two sides blamed each other for new attacks.

More than 400 people have been killed since early April and the island's north and east is now locked in a low-intensity conflict.

But the Oslo 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 government said it had been informed on arrival at the talks in Oslo that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) delegation would not meet them. It was not clear if the two sides were continuing to talk indirectly through the Norwegians.

''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 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.

The army said one officer was killed and a soldier wounded in a suspected rebel mine attack in the north-western Mannar district today. The LTTE said two civilians were killed in nearby rebel territory.

The Tigers blamed government forces operating behind rebel lines in contravention of the truce. The army denied the charge.

The two dead were contractors from the majority Sinhalese community working on restoring a reservoir, the ethnic Tamil rebels said. Another mine attack on a health services vehicle in northern Tiger territory wounded four, they said.

FEAR OF ESCALATION

Earlier in the day, the Tigers reported shelling near the northeastern port of Trincomalee, while the army said one of their camps near the eastern town of Batticaloa had come under mortar fire. Each denied the other's charge.

The Tigers yesterday said a civilian tractor was blasted by an army-laid mine near Batticaloa, killing 10. The military denied any involvement in that attack.

The army said it had reports of incidents in rebel territory, possibly attacks by renegade ex-Tigers, but denied any involvement.

The government denies backing the renegades, but the feud is seen as one of the central impediments to peace.

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.

But discussions at the Oslo meeting, which continues until Friday, were not to move beyond the operations of the 60-person Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).

SLMM has been caught in several firefights and angered both sides by accusing them of repeated ceasefire breaches. They blamed members of the armed forces for extra-judicial killings and ruled the rebels had no right to send their Sea Tiger warships to sea.

Diplomats had said bringing the two parties together, even if only to discuss the truce monitors, offered some hopes of a breakthrough on other issues, such as Tiger demands the government rein in the renegades or an agreement to resume substantive peace talks.

''If there is no progress, then I think there will be a slow escalation,'' said a Western diplomat.

REUTERS

Related Stories