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Sri Lankan Tamil groups clash ahead of talks
A recent spike in violence has left at least 166 people dead since December in North and East, where the majority of Tamils live.
A top Norwegian envoy arrived in Sri Lanka on Thursday to discuss the country's peace process with the president, amid fears that inter-factional fighting between Tamil rebels could cloud the prospects of peace.
Two members of a breakaway Tamil Tiger rebel faction were wounded in the fighting on Wednesday in the hamlet of Panichchankern, a rebel-controlled area in eastern Sri Lanka, according to the TamilNet website.
A rebel faction based in eastern Sri Lanka broke away from the mainstream Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2004. The LTTE accuses the military of backing the renegade faction -- a charge the government denies.
There was no independent confirmation of the TamilNet report, as Sri Lankan police and army forces do not enter areas under rebel control.
Norwegian peace envoy Eric Solheim was meanwhile set to meet with President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the capital Colombo later on Thursday to prepare for a second round of talks between the government and rebels in Geneva, Switzerland, this month.
A recent spike in violence that has left at least 166 people dead since December in the North and East -- where the majority of Sri Lanka's 3.2 million Tamils live -- has called in to question the efficacy of a Norwegian-brokered cease-fire signed by the government and rebels in 2002 to end nearly two decades of civil war.
At the first Geneva meeting in February, both sides pledged to scale down the violence, yet since then the rebels and government have repeatedly traded accusations of cease-fire violations.
They also agreed to meet again on April 19-21.
On Wednesday, Jon Hanssen-Bauer — who manages the European cease-fire monitoring team on a day-to-day basis — met with rebel leaders in the north who raised concerns that the government has not honoured a pledge to clamp down on paramilitary attacks on Tamil Tiger rebels.
The government accuses the separatist rebels of continuing to recruit underage combatants and attacking government troops. The Geneva meeting was the first high-level contact between the two sides since peace talks broke down in 2003 after six rounds of negotiations.
The Tigers began fighting in 1983 for a separate state for minority Tamils, claiming discrimination by the country's Sinhalese majority. The conflict has cost an estimated 65,000 lives.
