Colombo, Apr 30: The Tamil Tiger rebels' top negotiator will travel from his London home to Sri Lanka next week for meetings with the guerrillas' leadership to discuss stalled peace talks with the government, reports said today. It would be the first meeting between negotiator Anton Balasingham and the group's supreme leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran since the rebels said last week they were withdrawing from the seventh round of peace talks.

The rebels announced the suspension on April 21 saying that the government had not done enough to resettle more than 800,000 people, mostly Tamils, displaced by war and to rebuild the economy in the north of the country. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam began fighting in 1983 for a separate homeland for the ethnic Tamil minority, claiming discrimination at the hands of the majority Sinhalese. The two sides signed a cease-fire agreement in February 2002. In subsequent peace talks, the rebels have said they would settle for autonomy in Tamil-majority areas, instead of outright independence.

The visit from Balasingham, who holds a British passport, is expected to coincide with the visit of a Japanese envoy, Yasush I Akashi, to rebel-held areas in the north, said Tamilnet, a website that reports on Tamil-related news. Japan is taking an active part in efforts to end Sri Lanka's civil war and is hosting a major donor conference in June to raise money to rebuild war-ravaged parts of the country.

Bureau Report