Sri Lankan rebel Tamil Tigers said on Friday they had reassured mediator Norway that they stood by their commitment to a cease-fire and peace process in their conflict with the Colombo government.
They made the comments after refusing on Thursday to meet a Sri Lankan government delegation for talks near Oslo. Norway then asked both sides to say if they still backed the 2002 truce which it brokered, but which now lies in tatters. Norway had hoped the meeting would be a first step on the road back to peace talks and was blindsided by the refusal.
"Our commitment to the peace process and the ceasefire agreement is full and continuing with the sincerity we have shown since the beginning," Tamil Tiger political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan told a news conference in south-east Norway. He said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were firm in their decision that the European Union members of a five-nation Nordic cease-fire monitoring mission should leave the Indian Ocean island.
That decision followed the EU's labelling last month of the Tigers as a banned terrorist organisation after a recent upsurge of violence in the country where two decades of civil war has killed about 64,000 people.
The LTTE political leadership would grant Norway the time it requested to arrange a withdrawal of the EU monitors, Thamilselvan said. Norway's special envoy for the Sri Lankan peace process Jon Hanssen-Bauer said: "We thought both parties came with the intention to meet and talk...There was no progress made."
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