Japan moves to save Lankan peace bid

The men had slept overnight at a Hindu temple after a ceremony in the Jaffna peninsula before troops allegedly took them away, the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said in a statement.

They said villagers found blood and three identity cards belonging to the missing men.

The defence ministry said it had no information about the Tiger allegations but said that in the country's east, troops and Tamil Tiger rebels traded mortar and automatic rifle fire on Sunday.

"There are no casualties among troops but we don't know if there are any on the other side," the spokesman said, adding that the firefight around the Vavunathivu military base lasted nearly two hours.

The latest attacks came as Japanese envoy Yasushi Akashi met Palitha Kohona, head of the government's peace secretariat which coordinates the Norwegian-backed peace initiative.

Akashi arrived in Colombo late Saturday. He is to meet President Mahinda Rajapakse on Monday, diplomats said.

The LTTE confirmed that the leader of their political wing, S.P. Thamilselvan, would hold discussions with the Japanese envoy on Tuesday in a rebel-held northern town.

Kohona welcomed Akashi's planned meeting with the senior rebel.

"The government wants Mr. Akashi to go to the north and meet with the LTTE at a time when we are getting ready for the second round of talks with many hiccups," he said.

A Japanese embassy spokesman said Akashi wanted to discuss the state of the peace process with the Tiger leadership.

The visit comes amid stepped-up efforts by the government to seek international pressure to revive talks with the rebels. Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera was visiting neighbouring India to brief it about developments.

Samaraweera arrives in India yesterday, hoping to persuade New Delhi to help broker peace in the island nation, which is teetering on the verge of a fresh civil war.

But India is unlikely to budge from maintaining a diplomatic distance from the ethnic conflict on the island off its southern coast due to disastrous previous experiences and domestic political compulsions, officials and analysts said.

Samaraweera's three-day visit is ostensibly to brief the Indian leadership on the situation in Sri Lanka. But Colombo has also been sending feelers to New Delhi urging it to pressure the Tamil Tiger rebels, Indian officials said.