Sri Lanka protest against Norwegian intervention

Hundreds of Sri Lankan nationalists have demonstrated outside the Norwegian embassy in the capital, Colombo, against Norway's attempts to broker peace talks between Tamil rebels and the government.

Heavily armed police surrounded the area, as protestors -- from the Sinhalese Heritage party -- burned an effigy of the peace envoy, Erik Solheim, and called for the Norwegians to leave. Mr Solheim held an unexpected meeting with Tamil rebel leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, a fortnight ago. The protest follows a bomb attack on the building in May and a letter sent to the embassy last week by the Marxist People's Liberation Front, accusing the Norwegians of backing the Tamil rebels in their seventeen year struggle for a separate state.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service