COLOMBO: Hopes for peace in Sri Lanka rose yesterday after the government revealed Tamil Tigers have agreed to resume face-to-face negotiations and end a seven-month deadlock in talks.
Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran has told Colombo he is committed to resuming talks on ending a decades-old separatist conflict that has claimed more than 60,000 lives, government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said.
“We need concrete positive commitments from the leader of the LTTE to resume talks. He has given that,” Policy Planning Minister Rambukwella, who is also the government’s chief spokesman on defence matters, told reporters.
Political sources close to the government said it was also ready to enter talks, but would keep up tit-for-tat attacks against Tamil rebels fighting for a separate homeland in the Sinhalese-majority country.
Diplomats involved in the Norwegian-backed peace process said Colombo’s stance could clear the way for direct talks between the two sides that Oslo is trying to arrange next month in a bid to save a tattered 2002 truce.
“This is a positive development,” a diplomatic source said. “It seems the government is clearing the way for talks after taking a hard line earlier.”
More than 1,500 people have been killed in an upsurge in violence since December, including a fierce sea battle this week off the country’s east coast that claimed the lives of up to 70 rebels.
There was no immediate reaction from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), but they have earlier made it clear they would enter talks without preconditions.
Asked if the 51-year-old LTTE leader had given the assurance in writing or verbally through Norway, Rambukwella said: “I will tell you after I discuss it with the president.”
President Mahinda Rajapakse had insisted that any resumption of talks, following an aborted meeting in June, should come after Prabhakaran gives a guarantee that he is serious about negotiations and that violence must stop.
Rambukwella also said last week’s visit to the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi by Norway’s ambassador here, Hans Brattskar, had proved positive.
“He came back with certain positive suggestions,” the minister said. “The president will look at it in the next few days.”
The new Norwegian head of Sri Lanka’s truce monitoring mission, Lars Solvberg, was also visiting the rebel-held town yesterday for talks with Tiger political-wing leaders.
The pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website said they were due to discuss the “ground situation,” even as the air force bombed suspected rebel positions and the two sides shelled each other along a de facto front line in the northern peninsula of Jaffna.
Military officials said the airforce hit new targets yesterday in the rebel-dominated district of Mullaitivu, but there were no details of casualties.
The military stepped up retaliatory strikes after an assassination attempt on army chief Sarath Fonseka in April.
Yesterday’s developments came a day after India, Sri Lanka’s closest neighbour, called for “special efforts” to end the upsurge of violence and break the deadlock in the peace process.
An Indian minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, said the country supported moves for a “devolution package that could command consensus among the major political parties, restore ethnic harmony and expeditiously address the legitimate aspirations of all sections of Sri Lankan society.”
Over the past three decades more than 60,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka’s drawn out ethnic conflict. – AFP
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