Colombo: A top envoy from mediator Norway arrived in Sri Lanka yesterday to try and salvage planned peace talks after recent violence, but Tamil Tiger rebels effectively added new conditions for their attendance.

Suspected rebels killed a policeman in a grenade attack on Monday night in the northern town of Vavuniya, the army said, while the Tigers said they killed three members of a renegade faction who attacked them in the east of the country. More than 70 people have died since the first week of April in suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) attacks and ethnic riots, sparking fears of a return to a civil war that has already killed more than 64,000 people.

Norway, which brokered the island's now extremely strained 2002 ceasefire, said special envoy Jon Hannsen-Bauer would meet both sides, travelling to the de facto Tiger capital tomorrow. The rebels pulled out of the talks at the weekend, accusing the government of interfering with the transport of eastern rebel commanders to a pre-talks meeting. Some diplomats believed that was just a gambit to delay or get out of the meeting.

Now, the government has agreed a private helicopter can be used to transport the commanders.

The Tigers have yet to say whether they will accept the offer, but have now effectively given new conditions for their attendance at Geneva.

"While our people are being killed and our shops are being looted we are not going to Geneva," head of the Tiger peace secretariat S. Puleedevan said by satellite phone.

Puleedevan said the LTTE, who have fought for two decades for a Tamil homeland, would discuss these issues including that of the eastern leaders' transport with Hanssen-Bauer.

"We will need to discuss a lot of things for example, the genocide of Tamils in Trincomalee, attacks on Tamil businessmen. Yesterday night, there was a paramilitary attack on us," he said.

The police say that, with less than 10 Tamils killed in riots in the northeastern town of Trincomalee, genocide is not the right word.

And they blame the Tigers for triggering the violence with a bomb in a crowded majority Sinhalese market place.