COLOMBO, April 21: Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels on Monday announced they were suspending peace talks with the Colombo government in a move diplomats saw as the biggest setback ever to the Norwegian-backed process.

Tamil Tiger rebels in a four-page letter to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said they would also not attend a crucial meeting that Japan is hosting in June to drum up international support for the peace bid.

“In accordance with the decision of our leadership, I am advised to bring to your urgent attention the deep displeasure and dismay of our organisation on some critical issues relating to the on-going peace process,” Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) chief negotiator, Anton Balasingham said.

The decision of the LTTE would affect the seventh round of peace talks due to open in Thailand on April 29. However, the LTTE letter made no direct reference to the four-day meeting that was to have taken up human rights issues.

“... the LTTE leadership has decided to suspend its participation in the negotiations for the time being. We will not be attending the donor conference in Japan in June.

“While we regret that we were compelled to make this painful decision, we wish to reiterate our commitment to seek a negotiated political solution to the ethnic question,” the letter said.

There was no immediate reaction from the government, but officials said the prime minister discussed the LTTE letter with his senior aides as well as with Norwegians.

“There would be a response shortly,” an official in the prime minister’s office said.

Earlier in the day, a key political level meeting between the government’s chief negotiator G. L. Peiris and his rebel counterpart, Anton Balasingham, was abruptly cancelled, officials said.

The two men were to hold talks in London, but the meeting did not take place, officials said adding, however, that Norwegian peace brokers had spoken to both sides.

The LTTE made serious objections to their being left out of a meeting last week in Washington hosted by the United States government to drum up international support for the peace process here.

“In spite of our goodwill and trust, your government has opted to marginalise our organisation in approaching the international community for economic assistance.

“We refer to the exclusion of the LTTE from the crucial international donor conference held in Washington on 14 April, 2004 in preparation for the major donor conference to be held in Japan in June,” the Tigers said.

They said they were also unhappy with the implementation of the Norwegian-brokered truce that went into effect on February 23 last year. The truce was also the centre piece of the peace process.

The Tigers charged that the military had not vacated public buildings and private homes it occupied in the northern peninsula of Jaffna in violation of the ceasefire.

“Though there is peace due to the silencing of the guns, normalcy has not returned to Tamil areas. Tens of thousands of government troops continue to occupy our towns, cities and residential areas suffocating the freedom of mobility or our people.

“Such a massive military occupation of Tamil lands, particularly in Jaffna - a densely populated district - during peace times denying the right of our displaced people to return to their homes, is unfair and unjust.”—AFP