Sri Lanka president pushes for peace talks as violence mounts  

Shimali Senanayake in Colombo January 24th, 2006, 8:00 pm. Three people were shot dead on Tuesday, even as Sri Lanka's president showed flexibility on a venue and pushed for early peace talks with Tamil Tiger rebels to avert a return to civil war.
President Mahinda Rajapakse held one-on-one talks with peace envoy Erik Solheim for over an hour, officials involved in the peace process said on condition of anonymity.

Rajapakse had indicated that he was willing to move away from his earlier insistence of talks in an Asian destination, the officials said. The government was now willing to hold talks even in Europe other than the Norwegian capital of Oslo, and the European Union nations in which the rebels have been slapped with travel restrictions, they said.




Associated Press,  Tue Jan 24 07:03:49 EST 2006

    DILIP GANGULY  -   Associated Press Writer  -              COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -  (AP)  Sri Lanka - 's president on Tuesday asked Norway's peace envoy to set up new talks with Tamil rebels in hopes of staving off a civil war, but separatists continued to brace for a possible return to the battlefield.        ``There is never a last minute to stop a war,'' he told the Foreign Correspondents Association of Sri Lanka -  on Monday.
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- The Academic

The SL president should be wary of the Norwegians as peace facilitators when, and if they were going to be another round of talks.   The LTTE would not and cannot act on their own if there weren't any tacit support from outside powers.

To believe that Prabakaran decides everything on his own is a myth.  No terrorist or extremist group can survive on it own agenda.


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H.U.MAN




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