Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels on Saturday rejected a government offer to hold crunch talks in Asia aimed at averting a return to civil war, insisting any meeting should be hosted by peace broker Norway.
New President Mahinda Rajapakse has offered to meet the rebels for immediate talks in any Asian country, but not in Europe. He has also angered the Tigers by rejecting their demand for an ethnic Tamil homeland outright.
S.P. Thamilselvan, head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) political wing, accused the government of trying to freeze the group out of Europe and of trying to convince the European Union to list it as a banned terrorist organisation.
"The first round of talks should be held in Norway," Thamilselvan told reporters in the northern rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi. "The government's position that talks should be held in an Asian country, that European countries should ban the LTTE ... we consider a coup attempt."
The government, which announced its Asia talks offer on Friday after rowing back on its predecessors' refusal to hold talks outside Sri Lanka, was not immediately available for comment.
The Tigers have threatened to resume their two-decade struggle next year unless Colombo comes up with a viable power-sharing blueprint, saying this is its last chance to avert a return to a war in which more than 64,000 people have died.
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