Sri Lanka president asks Tamil Tigers to resume talks

Sri Lanka’s embattled president has called for direct peace talks with the top leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels, saying he has appointed a group of experts to prepare an outline of a possible solution to the decades-old ethnic conflict.

“So what I say is, we will give them an outline, we can get the LTTE to sit and draft what they want,” Rajapakse said, calling the rebels by their formal name, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Rajapakse reiterated the offer in an interview with New Delhi Television at a time when his country was teetering on the edge of civil war with the rebels.

The government and Tamil rebels held a first round of peace talks in Geneva in February, but a second round planned for April was cancelled after the two sides blamed each other for rising violence.