Sri Lanka peace hopes 'still good'

The teams have agreed to speed up aid funding

The latest round of talks in the Sri Lankan peace process have concluded in Berlin, in the shadow of the deaths by suicide of three alleged Tamil Tiger arms smugglers on Friday.

We do recognise there will be ups and downs. But this won't result in a breakdown

GL Peiris, government negotiator

The Sri Lankan Government's chief negotiator told the BBC that both sides were still deeply committed to the process and that the prospects for success were a good deal better than at any time in the past.

The Tigers issued a statement on Saturday denying that they had been smuggling arms, blaming the Sri Lankan navy for Friday's incident, when three Tigers blew up their own boat after being boarded by ceasefire monitors.

The statement, issued in Berlin, brushed off the Jaffna incident as an "apparent communication failure" between the three rebels on the boat and Tamil Tiger commanders.

The Tigers say that the vessel which was blown up was a fishing trawler which had developed engine trouble.

Their statement claimed that the Sea Tigers had gone out to rescue the trawler which they were towing back to land when they were intercepted by the Sri Lankan navy who then returned to the scene with members of the monitoring mission.

They say that a light machine gun found in the trawler by the monitoring mission belonged to the Sea Tigers who had gone out to rescue the ship.

The Sri Lanka monitoring mission (SLMM) has insisted that Friday's incident represented a violation of the ceasefire.

SLMM spokesperson Teitur Torkelsson said that the monitors had found 23 mm guns, ammunition for AK 47s and three hand grenades.

He said: "They were all packed and furthermore hidden behind false walls on board the trawler. The walls were neatly nailed. It was very very difficult to see how the weapons somehow came from the speedboat in that sense."

The sides will work with Unicef on child recruitment

The pressure for success in the peace talks increased on Friday with Sri Lanka's two main opposition parties joining in an anti-government alliance.

The People's Alliance of President Chandrika Kumaratunga and the Marxist People's Liberation Front both take a hard line on the Tamil Tigers.

Human rights are high on the agenda in Berlin and a top international rights activist has been drafted in to boost the talks.

The two sides have agreed to let the UN children's agency, Unicef, supervise a joint programme by the government and rebels to rehabilitate child soldiers.

Mr Peiris said he also expected an accord to be signed next week to start the operations of a World Bank-supervised fund that will handle international aid money.

But, with both sides having perpetrated atrocities during this 20-year conflict, there has been a reluctance so far to look back at past wrongdoings for fear they could cause acrimony and upset the peace process.

Instead, the emphasis has been on securing human rights in the future.

Donor funds are urgently needed to rebuild the north of the country, much of which lies in ruins.

However, analysts say there is a danger that what little international attention there is on Sri Lanka will be diverted to the Iraq crisis, together with promises of help.