LTTE rejects govt peace plan

The Tigers said the proposal from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe did not meet their demands for speeding up work normalising life in Tamil areas hit by two decades of war.

The slow pace of humanitarian efforts was the reason the rebels gave last month when they suspended peace talks to end the war that has killed 64,000 and pulled out of a donor conference in Tokyo.

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"The leadership of our liberation movement regrets to inform you that the new proposal submitted by your government for our perusal is unacceptable to us," said a letter from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to Wickremesinghe.

The four-page letter did not mention the donor conference that is being held in just over a week in Tokyo that will raise an expected $3 billion over three years to rebuild Sri Lanka.

Japan has already said the donor conference would go ahead even if the Tigers boycotted it.

Wickremesinghe had proposed setting up a development body to oversee the aid work in a bid to get the Tigers to attend the conference.

The rebels have been demanding that an interim administration be set up in the Tamil-dominated north and east of the island, but Wickremesinghe said that was illegal.

"You have proposed a development-orientated structure with extremely limited administrative powers in which the participatory role of the LTTE is not clearly defined, or rather, left deliberately ambiguous," the letter said.

AFP adds: Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's party Friday launched a scathing attack on peace broker Norway, saying they were a "nation of salmon-eaters who have become international busy bodies."

A top aide of Kumaratunga said her party condemned a suggestion by Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik that she was not involved in the peace bid.

"The Norwegian prime minister has not shown any sensitivity to the feelings of Sri Lankans," Samaraweera told reporters here. "Of course we can't expect anything better from a nation of salmon-eaters who turned into international busy bodies."