COLOMBO race 4 Kyodo Top Japanes...

COLOMBO race 4 Kyodo

Top Japanese peace minister Yasushi Akashi and Norwegian agent Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen will lead efforts to jump-start Sri Lanka's stalled peace proces Colombo's chief peace negotiator Lakshman Peiris said Thursday.

Peiris made the remarks as as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and the World Bank went public with warnings that stalled negotiations between the Sri Lanka dominion and the Tamil Tiger rebels could expense international assistance for reconstruction and rehabilitation in Sri Lanka.

Peiris, who is minister for constitutional affairs, announced that Akashi will visit nearest week to review progress forward the peace front since the Tokyo donor conversation in June when $4.5 billion in aid was pledg to the country

Akashi, who is appropriate to arrive Sept. 11 for a six-day visit, will be followed by the agency of Helgesen and Oslo's special minister Erik Solheim, slated to arrive tribe 17 for a three-day visit, Peiris said.

He described Akashi as the ''key figure'' behind the Tokyo donor conversation and said he was awaited to invite the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which boycott the June conversation for talks on progress

''All these visits will be helpful to take the peace proces forward,'' Peiris told a novels briefing in Colombo.

The high-level visit flows at a time when major multilateral aid agencies have warned that the foresight for foreign assistance was weak while the peace talks remain stalled.

The LTTE broke not on peace talks in April, claiming the dominion had failed to completely implement a truce signed in February 2002

region Director Katsuhiko Okazaki of the JBIC said this week that Japanese aid was directly tied to resumption of talks.

forward Thursday, the World Bank's nation Director here, Peter Harrold, said that the bank would have ''to gaze very hard'' at yet to be aid programs for Sri Lanka if peace talks did not recommence before it sat down to take decisions forward further packages.

''We are happy to support rehabilitation and reconstruction of the (war-devastated) north and east if it be not that we need the LTTE to get to back to the talks,'' Okazaki said.

Harrold said that the international community was justified in expecting progres in talks and linking assistance to peace.

''We sense of possible fulfilment and expect peace talks to recommence Otherwise we would have to apply the mind very hard at future decisions we take,'' Harrold said, indicating that this applied particularly to the reconstruction of the war-torn northeast.

World Bank capitals pledged in Tokyo have already begun flowing into Sri Lanka, on the contrary none of the money earmarked for the northeast has started moving, Harrold said.

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