Sri Lanka awaits Prabhakaran speech

Top Tamil rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran marked his 46th birthday yesterday by freeing 15 prisoners as the government awaited his annual speech for clues on opening peace talks.

Prabhakaran's birthday coincided with his separatist movement's Heroes Week which ends today with an address that traditionally sets policy for the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that he leads.

The LTTE's clandestine Voice of Tigers radio said yesterday Prabhakaran granted amnesty to 15 people "convicted" of crimes in areas held by the rebels.

The radio earlier announced the Tigers were commemorating some 16,000 combatants killed since the first rebel known as Lieutenant Shankar was shot dead by government forces in November 1982.

This year Prabhakaran's statement is keenly awaited by the Sri Lankan government as well as the diplomatic community in the wake of mounting international pressure on both sides to get down to peace talks.

Visiting British junior foreign minister Peter Hain told reporters here Thursday that the Sri Lankan government was looking for Prabhakaran to signal a willingness to talk. Hain said he was asking both the Tamil Tigers and the Colombo government to begin a dialogue in line with an initiative by Oslo to bring the two parties to the negotiating table."It is in everybody's interest to end the military conflict," Hain said.

"We have given a strong message to the LTTE that there is no alternative to peace talks. And that has been my advice to the government." Hain said he was also in close contact with the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, Karl Inderfurth, who begins a two-day visit here today.

Sri Lanka's peace hopes were raised earlier this month when the Norwegian special envoy to the island, Erik Solheim, held a rare meeting with Prabhakaran and later announced the rebels were serious about talks without pre-conditions.

Solheim was, however, cautious not to place any timetable for bringing the warring sides to the table. "It could be in weeks, or it could be in years," Solheim told reporters shortly after talking with Prabhakaran in the rebel-held Wanni region on November 1. "Nobody can expect a quick fix or an immediate solution.

A Western diplomat here said: "What ever happens, it is clear that Prabhakaran is the key factor in the peace equation." However, the LTTE in a statement issued from their London office said the rebel leader had said de-escalation of the conflict was a "necessary pre-requisite" for talks.

"By de-escalation, he meant the cessation of armed hostilities, the removal of military aggression and occupation, the withdrawal of the economic embargo and the creation of conditions of normalcy in the Tamil homeland," the LTTE said.