Tamil Tiger rebels' supremo Velupillai Prabakaran is set to meet with the Norwegian peace facilitators on Saturday, diplomatic sources said Friday.

Prabakaran is to meet Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen Saturday morning in the rebel-held Kilinochchi district in the northern province.

The leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was not seen in public since the Dec. 26 tsunami tidal wave attacks inSri Lanka until early this week when he met a rehabilitation and reconstruction relief need assessment team.

The state media had speculated about his safety even hinting that he might have been among the 38,000 people confirmed dead in the island.

Petersen's meeting with Prabakaran will be crucial to the future of the stalled peace negotiations, diplomats based here said.

Although the main topic would be the rehabilitation and relief of the tsunami devastation in the LTTE held areas the effort to kick start the peace process would very much be on focus judging by the arrival in the country of the rebel group's chief peace negotiator Anton Balasingham.

Balasingham arrived at the Colombo international airport from London around midday on Friday and was almost immediately dispatched to the rebel-held areas aboard a government helicopter, officials said.

The Norwegian peace facilitators who have tried without success to revive the stalled talks since May last year are making yet another effort in the post-Tsunami scenario.

Jayantha Dhanapala, Head of the government's Peace Secretariat said last week that the tsunami disaster had presented both sides with a new opportunity to engage in the process.

Talks came to be stalled in April 2003 with the LTTE's temporary pull out after involving themselves in six rounds of negotiations.

The Norwegian facilitation is aimed at ending Sri Lanka's long drawn ethnic conflict that claimed over 64,000 lives since 1983.

Source: Xinhua