Sri Lanka in talks with Norway on resuming negotiations with rebels

Colombo (dpa) - Sri Lanka is to open talks with Norway on ways to resume the stalled peace talks with Tamil rebels in a bid to find a political solution to the ethnic conflict, now temporarily halted due to a ceasefire, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera will meet his Norwegian counterpart, Jonas Gahr Store, on Thursday in Hong Kong to open the first official discussion on recommencing talks with the rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), he said.

He said the decision to open talks was in keeping with the Lankan Government's commitment to commence talks with the LTTE to try to end the 22-year-old ethnic conflict.

President Mahinda Rajapakse, when taking office after winning the November 17 election, pledged to renew talks with the rebels and invited them to return to the negotiating table.

Two key parties that backed Rajapakse in his election victory are opposed to Norway continuing its role as facilitators to the peace process, claiming that they were biased towards the rebels.

But Rajapakse last week invited Norway to continue its role as facilitators to the peace process, ignoring the two parties - the Marxists JVP and the Buddhist monk led JHU.

Thursday's meeting between the two foreign ministers will be the first high-level contact between Rajapakse's new administration and Oslo regarding the peace process.

Norway is backing Sri Lanka's peace process and helping to monitor a ceasefire agreement between the government and the LTTE which has been in effect since February, 2002. A group of Scandinavian countries are helping in the monitoring process.

Rebels during the past two weeks have killed 17 soldiers and one policeman and wounded more than two dozen others in separate attacks in the strife-torn north and eastern provinces.

The attacks were seen as a measure to pressure the government before any talks could resume. The LTTE held six rounds of peace talks with the previous government, but these talks stalled in April 2003 when rebels pulled out of the talks without giving reasons.

Subsequently they claimed that then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was trying to trap them with the support of the international community and disarm them.

A key member of the LTTE who were involved in the peace talks subsequently broke away and has formed his own group posing a threat to the rebels. dpa ad ds