Thursday, August 3 2006 12:07 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: After Japan, Norway is now seeking a meeting with Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers chief Velupillai Prabhakaran in a bid to see if the country's bloodied and derailed peace process can be put back on track.

This will be one of Norwegian peace envoy Jon Hanssen Bauer's aims as he begins a visit to the island amid the worst fighting since the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) signed a ceasefire agreement in 2002.

The clashes, which have left an unspecified number dead, are concentrated in the eastern district of Trincomalee and were fuelled by the closure by the Tigers of a reservoir that supplied water to villagers and cropland.

The immediate agenda for Hanssen-Bauer will be resurrecting the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the five-nation Nordic body that oversees the truce.

Finland, Denmark and Sweden have decided to pull out of Sri Lanka after the LTTE refused to deal with them following the European Union ban on the Tigers. That leaves in the SLMM only 20 monitors of Norway and Iceland, which are not in the European Union.

Some countries have informed Norway that they are willing to take the place of Denmark, Finland and Sweden but they can come in only after the specific approval of the LTTE and Colombo.

The new enthusiasts are not Nordic countries, and so their inclusion will need a slight change in the charter of the SLMM that was meant to be a Nordic body.

Hanssen-Bauer will be meeting government leaders in Colombo. In the LTTE-held northern town of Kilinochchi, he will seek a meeting between Norwegian facilitators and Prabhakaran, who does not normally meet visitors.

In the wake of Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar's assassination a year ago, Norway had decided that it would henceforth deal only with the LTTE chief since it had similar access to President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Norwegian International Development Aid Minister Erik Solheim, who was originally Norway's special envoy, did meet Prabhakaran in January this year. But Hanssen-Bauer failed to meet him during a subsequent visit.

Members of the co-chairs to the peace process (Norway, Japan, the US and the European Union) increasingly feel it is a waste of time meeting anyone in the LTTE other than its chief because their concerns are not being passed on to him and that it is only Prabhakaran who can take major decisions.

In informal discussions with one another, the co-chairs feel that Prabhakaran is not being properly briefed about what the international actors are trying to achieve in Sri Lanka.

If Prabhakaran agrees to meet Norwegian diplomats, then Hanssen-Bauer may fly again to Sri Lanka with Solheim.

Japan's special envoy to Sri Lanka, Yasushi Akashi, has also decided that he would try to meet the LTTE chief when he travels to the island this month.

In Colombo too, it is vital to be in touch with President Rajapakse, feel the co-chairs, all of whom are also in close touch with India.

India itself is worried over the outbreak of fighting. Rajapakse has had a telephonic chat with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The co-chairs are also convinced that the peace process can be resurrected and can progress only if the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government take the initiative with a vision that they need to ultimately bring peace to the war-ravaged country.

The broad understanding among the international players is that there can be no military victor in Sri Lanka, where both sides knows they cannot overwhelm the other and where ordinary Tamil and Sinhalese people are all for peace.

It is also felt that Colombo may have blundered by escalating military tensions over the row sparked by the LTTE move to close the sluice gates of a water reservoir that stopped water supply to some 60,000 villagers and vast areas of agricultural fields.

The Sri Lankan Air Force has been bombing LTTE territory in recent days, and both sides have attacked each other's positions. There are conflicting claims about the number of casualties. Norway has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.