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Tamil rebels offered peace carrot
TOKYO, Japan -- Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has offered a provisional administrative structure for the island's Tamil-majority region, according to a Reuters report. Wickremesinghe made the announcement at a donors' meeting in Tokyo, Japan which the rebels are boycotting because of what they say is a lack of progress in rebuilding war-hit Tamil areas, Reuters said. The move is a step towards meeting a key demand of rebels for resuming peace talks abandoned in April. The rebels have said they would consider returning to the talks to end 20 years of civil war if Wickremesinghe accepted their proposal for an interim administration in the Tamil-majority north and east. Sri Lanka, meanwhile, stands on the verge of receiving billions of dollars of aid to be used in ending more than two decades of civil war. Senior officials from dozens of countries and multilateral agencies are meeting this week to consider the money. The conference sessions are being chaired by the United States, the European Union, Japan -- which has taken a keen interest in the peace efforts in the fellow Buddhist country -- and Norway, which is brokering the peace process. Japan opened the conference by pledging $1 billion to help rebuilding and the two-day meeting is expected to raise around $3 billion in total. The rebels broke off peace talks with the government seven weeks ago describing them as "a waste of time." They said many of the decisions taken during the six rounds of talks that would immediately improve conditions for hundreds of thousands of war-affected people in the north and the east of the country, have not been implemented. The rebels have decided to stay away from the Tokyo conference also to show the international community, the underwriters of the peace process, their dismay at the lack of progress on the ground where poverty is endemic, and dividends of nearly 18 months of cease-fire are hard to come by. The rebels' view is shared by a government minister who after visiting the areas of the north told his cabinet colleagues last week he was "shocked" to see the degree of depravation. "These people are living horribly in unhygienic conditions ... have no proper drinking water, no roofing, no proper place to sleep," he was reported as saying in local newspapers. In the past few weeks, many senior diplomats traveled to the rebel-held territory in northern Sri Lanka to urge the rebels to attend the conference. According to a recent survey, an overwhelming majority of Sri Lankans back the peace talks to end the war, and 62 percent believe there will be peace soon. -- CNN Correspondent Kasra Naji contributed to this report
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