COLOMBO, 1 September 2003 — Tamil Tigers rebels will respond within a month to an offer from the Sri Lankan government to revive peace talks that have been stalled since April, a pro-rebel website said yesterday.
Tamilnet.com reported that the Tigers had completed substantial work on their counter-proposals to resume Norwegian-brokered peace negotiations aimed at ending a three-decades-long war on the island.
The proposals were drafted at a four-day, closed-door meet in Paris last week of the Tigers and their constitutional and legal experts.
They were being taken to rebel-held Wanni in northern Sri Lanka for the approval of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leadership.
“The draft proposal will then be handed over to the Norwegian government (which) will submit the LTTE’s response to the government of Sri Lanka,” the Tamilnet website said.
“This process is expected to take approximately four weeks according to informed sources.”
LTTE advisers from Australia, Britain, Malaysia and Singapore took part in the Paris meeting, the website reported.
It was arranged by the Oslo and the Colombo governments but there was no input in the discussions from France or Norway, diplomatic sources here said.
However, Norway’s special peace envoy Erik Solheim held talks with the LTTE in Paris at the end of their internal talks on ways to take the peace process forward, the sources said.
The Tiger rebels suspended participation in peace negotiations with the Colombo government after accusing it of going back on promises made during six rounds of talks since September last year.
The Tigers have since been under international pressure to end their boycott and take part in negotiations aimed at finding a political settlement to a conflict which has claimed more than 60,000 lives in the past three decades.
The Paris meeting focused on formulating a response to the government’s July 17 proposals aimed at meeting Tiger demands for greater political, financial and administrative powers in the island’s war-torn northeast ahead of a final peace deal.
The government’s chief peace negotiator, G. L. Peiris, has said he hoped negotiations could resume by the end of September, although the Tigers have not given a clear time frame for reviving the peace bid.
Three key members of the LTTE delegation to Paris led by S. P. Thamilselvan, the head of political section, are due to visit Switzerland on Wednesday to meet with Swiss officials before returning home, Tamilnet said.
