News

Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera will begin a visit to Norway tomorrow, as Sri Lanka's peace process stands at the cross roads amid an ever-increasing spate of violence that has pushed the island to the edge of war.

Minister Samaraweera's visit although previously planned, will be to discuss Sri-Lanka's tenuous ceasefire and the future of the peace process with Norwegian peace brokers, Foreign Ministry officials said.

Mr. Samaraweera is also set to hold talks with Norway's Prime Minister and other senior government officials.

The ministerial visit will begin a day after the LTTE leaves the Norwegian capital after they refused to hold previously scheduled talks with Sri Lankan Government delegates.

The Government delegation left Oslo hours after it was informed of the Tigers’ refusal to engage in the two-day direct talks set for Thursday and Friday.

“We are disappointed that the LTTE after coming to Oslo, with such a large delegation and at the expense of the Royal Norwegian Government, should have sought to so blatantly humiliate them by not participating at talks,” Dr. Palitha Kohona, Government peace secretariat head told The Sunday Times from London.He said the Government remained committed to the peace process and was ready to hold negotiations with the LTTE. Asked if the collapse of the Oslo talks will result in worsening violence in Sri Lanka, Dr. Kohona said, “Escalation of violence is entirely in the hands of the LTTE, that is categoric. We will not be the first to draw our swords.”

The Tamil Resurgence Organization, largely considered a front-group of the LTTE warned yesterday of more attacks on Government targets.

Dr. Kohona is expected back in the island later today. The Oslo talks, though limited to discuss the operations and security of the truce monitors, was expected to melt down tensions between the Government and the LTTE that have soared to unprecedented levels in recent weeks. Instead, it let to deepening the fissures between the parties and prompting Norway to even reconsider its role as facilitator.

“The parties for the last six months, refused to listen to our advice. They have not used the opportunities we have created for them by visits to Sri Lanka, Geneva or Oslo,” Norway's International Development Minister and chief peace broker Erik Solheim said by telephone from Oslo, yesterday

“They (the parties) should stop making demands on the facilitator. The time has come for the Government or the LTTE or both to make a serious initiative toward peace.”

In an ‘unprecedented,’ move, Norway has sought written pledges in the form of responses to five questions presented to President Mahinda Rajapaksa and LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran about their individual commitment to the Norwegian-brokered process. Top on the list was the commitment of the protagonists to the February 22, 2002 ceasefire agreement. The five questions also sought guarantees for the security of the Scandinavian truce monitors. Although the Norwegians had given the parties two weeks to respond, the Government is expected to make known its position this week, Presidential aides said. They however expressed disappointment that these could have been issues which could have been discussed and responded to across the table instead of via communiques, if not for the intransigence of the LTTE.

The only interaction the Government and LTTE delegations had in Oslo was a brief exchange during dinner, officials involved in the process said on condition of anonymity, during which no indication was made that the Tigers were unwilling to sit across the table.

The LTTE has also objected to monitors from Sweden, Denmark and Finland being apart of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission saying their neutrality has been impaired by the EU listing of the LTTE as a terrorist organization last month. Some 37 of the 57 monitors overseeing Sri Lanka's ceasefire are from Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The Tigers have not made any alternative suggestions of countries from which replacements may be sought and said they leave it to Norway to decide, rebel sources said yesterday.

Senior Government officials said Sri Lanka is not ‘wedded’, to the current composition of the SLMM and was willing to discuss alternatives.

Norwegian peace brokers have expressed frustration and say they will not take the initiative to find replacements until firm commitments are made by the parties to the process and for the security of the monitors. Minister Samaraweera is set to make an official visit to Finland after talks in Norway.

Meanwhile, the LTTE prepared to leave Oslo today after meetings with its supporters who visited them at Thorbjørnrud Hotel in Jevnaker, Oslo, Tiger sources said.