Lanka plea to Tigers: Resume peace talks

Colombo: The Sri Lankan government appealed on Monday to the Tamil Tiger rebels to resume stalled peace talks before the country descends into full-scale war.

The appeal comes amid a sharp spike in violence across this island nation, with government forces and Tiger rebels engaging in a bloody tit-for-tat campaign that has left dozens dead in just the past few days.

A statement from the government Peace Secretariat, which oversees the peace process, said it wants to ''engage the LTTE in talks so as to address the root causes of the conflict that may have contributed to it to take to arms and the path of terrorism.''

The statement urged the rebels ''to re-enter negotiations'' either directly or through Norwegian facilitators who brokered the country's oft-violated 2002 cease-fire.

The Tigers, formally called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and who have been fighting for two decades to create a Tamil homeland in the country's north and east, could not be reached for comment. The person who answered the phone at a rebel office in the Tiger stronghold of Kilinochchi, said officials were not available.

The government statement also denied the existence of a de facto Tiger state - though the Tigers control large islands of territory where they have everything from a police force to a judicial system, and where government officials are allowed only with Tiger invitations.

''Neither the government of Sri Lanka nor any other member of the international community recognizes a 'de facto State of Tamil Eelam (homeland),''' the Peace Secretariat statement said. ''This remains a myth.''

Soon after signing a Norwegian-brokered 2002 cease-fire that halted the country's two decades of civil war, the rebels and the government held six rounds of peace talks, but they broke down on rebels' demand for sweeping autonomy.

The rebels have been fighting since 1983 in the island nation south of India to create an independent homeland for predominantly Hindu Tamils, a minority that has faced decades of discrimination by the largely Buddhist Sinhalese majority.

The civil war killed more than 65,000 people before the 2002 cease-fire, and talks to build on the truce have faltered as sporadic shootings and bombings have grown increasingly frequent.