Sri Lanka shelling continues, Norway meets rebels

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka, Aug 6 (Reuters) Government artillery pounded Tamil rebel positions in northeast Sri Lanka today as a Norwegian peace envoy was due to meet the guerrillas in the hope of ending days of new fighting.

A rebel source told Reuters yesterday the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) would halt their first offensive on army territory since a 2002 truce and pull back to their original positions. The government said that would stop hostilities.

''I can't see the reason for them to fight any longer down here because they are stuck in roughly the same position they were before it started,'' said retired Swedish Maj Gen Ulf Henricsson, head of the Nordic mission monitoring the truce.

''You never know. Of course, it is up to the parties.'' But he said the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) had not received any official communication from the rebels to say they were withdrawing. Nor did he have any reports they were doing so.

Intermittent artillery fire from government bases around the northeastern port town of Trincomalee could be heard in the morning, with a multi-barrel rocket barrage just before dawn.

There was no immediate word of any casualties.

The rest of the island was largely quiet, the army said, except for an attack on a night patrol in the northwestern Mannar district that killed one soldier and a grenade attack in the same area that wounded two policemen.

A dispute over a rebel-held water supply to government territory sparked days of aerial bombing around the northeastern port city of Trincomalee and heavy but localised fighting.

Thousands fled the government-held town of Mutur just south of Trincomalee as Tigers infiltrated into it and a two-decade civil war that has already killed more than 65,000 people seemed to be restarting.

NORWEGIAN HOPE? The government says Mutur town, now devastated and abandoned, is once again under their control although yesterday pockets of resistance remained in its outer suburbs. The army says it has killed 100 or more Tigers, pushing the rebels back.

Many of the Muslim population fleeing Mutur say they believe the Tigers, who want a homeland in the northeast for ethnic minority Tamils, wanted them out of town. The army says there are reports the Tigers massacred 100 Muslim civilians.

The Tigers deny the charge. Exact casualty figures are unavailable but residents say both sides shelled the town.

''The government claim that we massacred civilians is completely false,'' said LTTE peace secretariat head S.

Puleedevan. ''It is an attempt to tarnish the credibility of the LTTE.'' Norwegian envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer was in the northern rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi today to meet the Tiger political leadership and try and broker a halt in the fighting and perhaps even a return to talks the Tigers pulled out of in April. But few are optimistic.

He will likely try to persuade the Tigers to allow members of SLMM from European Union states Finland, Sweden and Denmark, to stay in the monitoring mission.

The Tigers say they want them out by September 1 because the EU has banned the LTTE as a terrorist group. That would only leave a couple of dozen monitors from non-EU members Norway and Iceland in the country.

REUTERS AKJ HS0955