Lanka, LTTE talks off to rocky start

Celigny, (Switzerland): Talks between Sri Lanka's warring parties were off to a rocky start on Thursday with The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) immediately rejecting a government demand for amending the present ceasefire agreement and mediator Norway warning that expectations should not be high.

LTTE shot down Colombo's demand to amend the truce agreement that went into effect on February 23, 2002 saying it was a good document as the first direct talks for restoring peace began in the Swiss village of Celigny near Geneva after a three-year deadlock.

Colombo had been hoping to get the LTTE to agree to amend the ceasefire in line with an election promise made by the government of Mahinda Rajapakse.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of Europe-based Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese converged on the UN office in Geneva on Wednesday. They were protesting against the LTTEs' alleged policy of recruiting children for the civil war.

UNICEF reported that the LTTE had recruited hundreds of children as soldiers in the beginning of 2004.

Protesters held up banners demanding that children should not be drafted as soldiers and be allowed to go to school.

Negotiators from the Sri Lankan government and the rebel LTTE sat down again after the two sides made strong opening statements a day earlier sticking to their guns, diplomats said.

The final sessions got underway after Sri Lanka's key international financial backers, the US, Japan, the European Union and Norway issued a statement asking the two sides to be more accommodating.

"We urge parties to approach the opportunity with an open and flexible attitude," said the quartet in a statement issued in Washington.

The four helped raise 4.5 billion dollars in foreign aid to rebuild Sri Lanka in June 2003.

Sri Lanka wants to amend the ceasefire after saying that it was against the country's constitution while the guerrillas insist that they will only consider better implementation of what has already been agreed.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka's three-decades-old ethnic conflict, and four previous peace attempts have ended in failure.

Diplomats said they believed that the most they could achieve in the current talks would be an agreement to hold further meetings, calling getting both sides to the table "a big breakthrough" in itself.

(With AFP inputs)