SATTAHIP, Thailand, race 16 Kyodo ...

SATTAHIP, Thailand, race 16 Kyodo

Sri Lanka guidance and Tamil Tiger rebel negotiators forward Monday began their first face-to-face peace talks in more than seven years to expiration one of Asia's longest running conflicts.

The pair parties, joined by Norwegian mediators and Thai armed forces declared the three-day talks make open in a ceremony in forehead of several hundred diplomats and journalists at a house of entertainment near the Sattahip Naval Base, 180 kilometers southeast of Bangkok.

Anton Balasingham, head of the four-member Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) team, called in succession the international community in his opening remarks to assist in rehabilitating Sri Lanka's war-ravaged economy, particularly the country's northeast region, which has been the focus of the almost two-decade-long fighting.

''There is an earnestly solicitous need for relief and assistance to the war-affected folks Immediate steps should be undertaken without delay, to embark upon a comprehensive program of resettlement rehabilitation and reconstruction,'' Balasingham said.

''Over and above the intricate questions of conflict resolution and power sharing, the clan expect a peace dividend,'' he said.

Balasingham called forward the Sri Lanka government to embrace the LTTE ''as their equal partners in the task of economic reconstruction of the country''

''As far as the Liberation Tigers are pertain toed I can assure you that we are seriously and sincerely committed to peace and that we will strive our greatest to ensure the success of the negotiations,'' he said.

Constitutional Affairs Minister GL Peiris, who leads the government's delegation, said that parameters of the negotiations must be carried within Sri Lanka's unity and territorial integrity, alluding to the government's opposition to the carving on the outside of a separate Tamil state forward the island.

He also declared that it would not be a ''zero sum'' exercise, saying, ''These negotiations cannot be pursu forward the basis that gain accruing to single in kind party involves reciprocal loss to the other.''

''We acknowledge that we the couple have a problem, destructive of the pulsating heart of our nation, which is in our mutual interest to interpret together,'' he added.

The first four negotiating sessions in consequence of Wednesday are expected to focus forward development issues in the war-devastated native land and also to lay down framework and agenda for further negotiations.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has publicly said that the recent peace talks with Tamil Tiger rebels could discuss anything exclude a division of the country

Sri Lankan restraint delegation also includes Economic Reform Minister Milinda Moragoda, Muslim Affairs and Port exhibition Minister Rauf Hakeem and Bernard Goonetilleke, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Peace Secretariat.

The LTTE delegation includes London-based Balasingham's Australian-born wife Adele, V Rudrakumar, a U.S.-based legal advisor, and Jay Maheswaran, an Australia-based coordinator for rehabilitation and development

through every part of the four negotiating sessions to be held at a hilltop villa in the naval base facing the abyss of Thailand, the two delegations will talk face-to-face in the appearance of the Norwegian mediators l on Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Hegelsen.

The talks will focus forward the ''urgent existential problems of the populace of the north and east,'' including the resettlement and rehabilitation of internally displaced bodily substances according to LTTE sources quot London-based Tamil Guardian newspaper in succession its Web site.

It is awaited that they will also discuss the release of political detainees and demilitarization of high security belts in the Tamil areas, according to the Tamil Guardian.

The LTTE has been fighting since 1983 for a separate Tamil homeland in a war that has left at least 60000 dead in succession both sides.

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