S Lanka govt still committed to peace: Minister

Oslo, June 12: Sri Lanka's government is still committed to a 2002 peace process with Tamil Tiger (LTTE) rebels despite an increasingly shaky ceasefire, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera said today.

Peace mediator Norway wrote to both sides last week asking for confirmation they were committed to the process after talks in Oslo on the safety of Nordic ceasefire monitors collapsed last week without the two sides ever meeting.

It would have been the first face-to-face meeting between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) since Geneva peace talks stalled in February.

''Our government is firmly committed to peace and committed to a negotiated settlement, (and) our friends here in Norway will continue with us in our search for an honourable peace,'' Samaraweera told reporters after meeting his Norwegian counterpart in Oslo.

Their meeting was a long-standing arrangement and focused on bilateral links rather than the peace process in Sri Lanka's 20-year civil war, which has killed around 65,000 people.

On Friday, the Tigers' political wing leader SP Thamilselvan reaffirmed the LTTE's commitment to the truce and peace process despite refusing to meet the Sri Lankan government delegation in Norway on Thursday.

Outside the Norwegian foreign ministry, about 20 Tamil refugees shouted and waved posters showing colour photos of hanged and garrotted women and children they say were killed last week by government forces.

''The EU rewards state-sponsored terrorism,'' the poster captions said.

In May, the European Union put the LTTE on its list of banned terrorist organisations. The United States had earlier labelled it a terrorist group.

The LTTE then said that EU citizens could not be neutral and demanded EU members Finland, Sweden and Denmark withdraw from the Nordic monitoring mission. This would cut the group's numbers to 20 from 57 and leave non-EU Iceland and Norway alone with the task.

Norway says the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) would be virtually powerless if reduced to those numbers and it would take six months to find replacements.

Violence in Sri Lanka -- still a Western tourist destination -- has been smouldering throughout the year and has killed an estimated 600 people. Today a government spokesman said a landmine had killed another soldier.

Reuters

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