Sri Lankan Tamil Rebels Pondering over Govt Proposals

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, July 20, 2003

Sri Lankan Tamil Rebels Pondering over Govt Proposals

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Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels are studying a proposal submitted to them by the government as the key to the resumption of the stalled Norwegian-brokered peace process,sources from rebel-held north said Saturday.

The rebel sources in the northern Jaffna peninsula said that head of the political wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE) rebels S.P. Thamilselvan has handed over the proposals to LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Prabhakaran has discussed the government proposal over the telephone with rebel chief negotiator Anton Balasingham, who is based in London, the sources added.

The Sri Lankan government announced on Thursday that its proposals for a provisional administrative structure for the war-battered north and east had been handed over to the Norwegian peace facilitators for onward transmission to the LTTE.

The government's proposals are in response to the rebel demand for the setting up of an interim administration if they are to return to the direct negotiating process.

The LTTE, after six rounds of direct negotiations which commenced in September 2002, announced a temporary pullout from the peace process in April.

They accused the government of doing little to implement decisions reached at the previous rounds of talks.

After a major international donor conference held in Tokyo in early June, the LTTE put forward their interim council demand.

They demanded politico-administrative powers, claiming that thegovernment bureaucracy was not capable of utilizing the bulk of the 4.5 billion US dollars from international donors at the Tokyo donor conference.

Government spokesman and Constitutional Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris, while announcing the dispatch of the government proposals on Thursday, said that he was not expecting a swift response from the rebels.

However, the rebel sources indicated that the rebels are likelyto respond with minimum delay.

More than 64,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka's two decades of ethnic war in the north and east since 1983.

The LTTE waged the war in their bid to set up a separate homeland for the minority Tamils, claiming discrimination at the hands of the majority Sinhalese community.

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