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Peace talks in Geneva to be made transparent
Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse wants to make transparent the talks with Tamil rebels in Geneva this week.
- By Sinha Ratnatunga, Correspondent
- Published: 00:00 February 19, 2006
Colombo: Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse wants to make transparent the talks with Tamil rebels in Geneva this week.
He will set up an operations room in his official residence so that his coalition partners, the marxists and the Buddhist monks, can witness 'live' the negotiations between government negotiators and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at resumed peace talks.
There will be telephone hook-ups to the Sri Lanka delegation as well, so that last-minute advice can be passed on, a source at the Presidential Secretariat said, amid fears that the inexperienced official delegation may not be able to match up to the more experienced rebels at the talks.
The government delegation left last night via London for crucial talks to save a fragile ceasefire and prevent the island from slipping back to war. The LTTE team has already left the island.
The talks are set to begin on Wednesday, four years to the date (February 22) when then prime minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran signed a Norwegian-brokered cease-fire.
The two-day session will be the first face-to-face meeting in three years and takes place amid fears that the island had slid dangerously close to resuming civil war following a spate of killings that left scores dead. "We are looking forward to fruitful negotiations," the government's chief negotiator Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said.
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