Sri Lankan truce monitors travel north to meet rebels

The international truce monitors observing Sri Lanka's fragile ceasefire with the Tamil Tiger rebels Wednesday traveled to the north to meet with the rebel leadership, defense sources said.

Trond Furuhovde, the head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the nordic truce monitoring group, left here for the rebel-held north town of Kilinochchi to hold talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) political wing leadership.

His visit comes a day after the SLMM was asked by Defense Secretary Cyril Herath to apprise the international community of alleged acts of violence carried out by the LTTE both in the east and in the capital Colombo.

The LTTE rebels have eliminated scores of intelligence personnel and members belonging to the renegade eastern commander known as Karuna.

Earlier this week the military accused the rebels of attacking and hurting government soldiers in the east which has become a hotbed of violence ever since Karuna broke ranks with the mainstream rebel faction in March.

The SLMM is being accused by the government of turning a blind eye to the LTTE's acts of violence which the government claims to be undermining the ongoing ceasefire and efforts to revive the stalled peace talks.

However, the truce monitors maintain that they are mere observers of the truce and have no intention to act as policemen.

"We are fed up of being blamed and we have been wrongly blamed," the SLMM's Deputy Chief Hagrup Haukland was quoted as saying in local media.

Furuhovde, a retired Norwegian major general, is to take up the government's security concerns with the LTTE.

Norway's efforts to revive the stalled peace talks have been of no avail and the increasing violent nature has raised fears of the country returning to the two decades of ethnic war that has claimed over 64,000 lives since 1983.

Fighting ceased in February 2002 with the signing of the ceasefire agreement between the two sides.

The direct peace negotiations came to be stalled in April last year after six rounds of face-to-face talks.

Source: Xinhua