Lanka asks Norway to arrange early talks

Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse (R) receives Norwegian peace envoy Erik Solheim in Colombo yesterday. At least five people have been killed since Solheim arrived on the island the previous day to try and jump start the island's stalled peace process and save the ceasefire. PHOTO: AFP

President Mahinda Rajapakse held closed-door talks with Norway's top peace envoy, Erik Solheim, on salvaging the island's Oslo-backed peace process, which has remained deadlocked since April 2003, officials said.

"The president's main message was to convey to the Tigers that he is ready for early talks," an official source close to the president said. "He wants the violence to stop and talks to begin at the earliest."

The official source, who declined to be named, said Solheim would carry Rajapakse's message to the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran on Wednesday.

Diplomatic sources close to the peace process said they were trying to arrange an initial ice-breaking meeting between the government and the Tamil Tigers by mid-February at a European venue.

A statement issued after the Rajapakse-Solheim talks gave no details, but said they had discussions "regarding the possibility of resuming negotiations with the LTTE and bringing an end to the current violence in the country."

The latest peace moves were marred by a bomb attack that killed three soldiers Monday and shootings that left two people dead in the island's restive north-eastern district of Trincomalee.

Unidentified gunmen shot dead government worker Subramaniam Sugirtharajan, 35, who also contributed to a Tamil newspaper, while another state employee was killed in Trincomalee, a military spokesman said.