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+--- Thread: LTTE, Sri Lanka Government at Swiss meet to save peace talks (/showthread.php?tid=8152)
LTTE, Sri Lanka Government at Swiss meet to save peace talks - Mathivathanan - 09-09-2003
COLOMBO, Sept 9 (AFP) - Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels and a government peace negotiator attended a seminar in Switzerland Tuesday amid diplomatic moves to revive the island's stalled peace process, officials here said.
The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) sent the head of its peace secretariat, S. Puleedevan, to the seminar in the Swiss capital Bern also attended by his counterpart on the government side, Bernard Gunatilleke, officials said.
Government and rebel sources said the meeting was not directly linked to ongoing efforts to salvage the peace bid, but it was the two sides' first foreign outing together since addressing international donors in Oslo last November.
The Tigers suspended participation in Norwegian-brokered peace talks in April and did not attend a June meeting in Tokyo to raise funds for Sri Lanka's reconstruction.
Both the Tigers and the government dismissed a local media report that they would discuss in Switzerland the establishment of a provisional administrative council in the island's embattled regions, as demanded by the Tigers.
"This seminar is something that had been organised some time ago and the Swiss had invited both parties as well as several other non-governmental agencies," a government source said.
The seminar includes three workshops on power-sharing and decentralisation, the role of gender in conflict and the peace process, and migration.
The Swiss government in a statement released here said it was "committed to giving political support" to the Sri Lanka peace process.
It said it would give advice on "power-sharing, federalism and decentralised structures" and help with mine clearance.
Officials here said attempts to restart Sri Lanka's faltering peace talks would be in focus when Japan's special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi begins a six-day visit on Thursday.
Akashi is to hold a meeting Friday to review progress since the June conference in Tokyo that raised 4.5 billion dollars for Sri Lanka.
The Tigers have not indicated if they will attend the follow-up talks, to which the United States, India, multilateral agencies and several European countries including Norway are also invited.
In other efforts to revive the peace bid, Norway's Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen and special adviser to the Norwegian foreign ministry, Erik Solheim, are due to begin a three-day visit from September 17.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, on a visit Tuesday to Malaysia, said he was confident the peace process would move forward.
"I am confident that they will come to the negotiation table. At the same time, I won't be surprised if there are one or two more breakdowns before we move on. It's the nature of discussions," Wickremesinghe said.
The Tigers boycotted the Tokyo aid meet and accused the international community of trying to arm-twist them into accepting a quick solution in exchange for foreign cash.
The rebels are demanding the establishment of an interim administration for the northern and eastern regions before they agree to resume peace negotiations.
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SriLanka-Tamil
http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/cw/Qsrilank...l.RpE2_DS9.html