COLOMBO: Norwegian peace facilitators and the Nordic truce monitors will meet on Thursday in Oslo to discuss their future role in Sri Lanka’s unravelling peace process, Norwegian embassy sources said. The meeting between the truce monitors and Norwegian peace envoy to Sri Lanka Jon Hanssen Baur comes in the wake of the LTTE demand that monitors from countries within the European Union be removed from the truce monitoring team known as the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).
Thirty seven of the 60-member truce monitoring mission are from EU countries, including the present head of the team, a retired Major General of the Swedish Army.
The Sri Lankan government, however, says it will oppose any move to re-appoint a Norwegian as the head of the SLMM on grounds that such an appointment will be unethical as Norway already plays the role of facilitator between the government and the LTTE.
Former SLMM head, Hagrup Haukland, a Norwegian, was replaced by the present Swedish head Ulf Henriccson, after President Mahinda Rajapakse strongly objected to Oslo playing the dual role of facilitator and heading the monitoring mission.
“There will be a conflict of interest if a Norwegian heads the SLMM as it plays a key role in the ceasefire,” Minister Keheliye Rambukwella, spokesperson for the government, told Dawn but said the government valued Norway’s role as facilitator.
The government is, however, cautious over the LTTE’s demand that ceasefire monitors from EU member countries be removed. “It seems that the LTTE wants the SLMM to quit,” a senior political source said after a Norwegian spokesperson was quoted in the local media as saying that a total suspension of the truce monitoring group was one alternative that would be taken up in Thursday’s talks in Oslo.
A likely downsizing of the team, would leave around 23 monitors from Norway and Iceland, the two countries within the SLMM which are not members of the EU.
“The final decision will be taken by monitors and the Norwegian facilitators tomorrow after extensive discussions. It is likely that they would decide to recruit more monitors from non-EU countries,” spokesperson for the Norwegian Embassy in Colombo, Eric Nurnverg, said but did not give further details.
Norwegian Embassy sources say Oslo would soon respond to the latest commitment to the ceasefire given by the government and the LTTE. Both the government and the LTTE last week said they were committed to the ceasefire, in response to a letter by Norwegian peace envoy Erik Solheim.
Norway’s letter posing five specific peace related questions to the LTTE leader Prabhakaran and President Mahinda Rajapakse was sent after direct talks between the rebels and the government failed to commence early June.
Despite assurances from both the government and the LTTE that they were interested in keeping the ceasefire alive, at least 800 people have been killed since January this year, with the latest LTTE suicide attack taking place on Monday in Colombo which killed a top general.
The government, following a tit-for-tat strategy, had been carrying out air strikes on LTTE bases after key rebel attacks in the past months. But now it has changed the tactic and it did not retaliate to Monday’s suicide attack. The military carried out air strikes on selected LTTE-occupied areas in the north and east end April after Army chief Lt. General Sarath Fonseka was seriously injured in suicide bombing at the army headquarters in Colombo. Air strikes were also carried out after the recent LTTE claymore mine attack on a passenger bus which left 60 people, including children and women, dead.
“It is not war we want. The air strikes were a deterrent move. What we now want is to urgently get the rebels to stop this -– stop this violence and to talk to the government to reach a political settlement,” Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva who headed a government delegation for peace talks in February in Geneva said when contacted.
The government last month began a process to initiate a constitutional change in a bid to devolve power to the north and east but so far the Tiger guerillas have shown no interest.
