Norway in Sri Lanka talks appeal

Refugees near Trincomalee who fled this week's air strikes

Norway's chief mediator to Sri Lanka has urged the Tamil Tiger rebels and the government to resume peace talks.

Erik Solheim was speaking after emergency talks with Sri Lanka's international aid donors on how to shore up a four-year truce.

Mr Solheim said Sri Lanka was still a long way from "all out war" even though about 100 people have been killed in the past two weeks.

There have been air strikes in the east after a suicide attack in Colombo.

'As soon as possible'

"We call upon both sides to put a stop to the violence," Mr Solheim said after the talks in Oslo.

Fear stalks port of peace War amid ceasefire

"On this basis we call upon the two parties to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible," the AFP news agency quotes him as saying.

"It is true that there has been a number of violations to the ceasefire, all of them regrettable... but still it is far short of full-scale war."

Also in Oslo, Mr Solheim's envoy to Sri Lanka, Jon Hanssen-Bauer said that the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government have said they will return to peace talks in Geneva.

However, he said no date had been set and that "there is one issue that must be solved first" before the Tigers' leadership agrees to go.

The Oslo donor talks - attended by Japan, the European Union and the US - come at the end of a dramatic week in which the government blamed the Tigers for a suicide attack inside the army headquarters in Colombo.

Ten people were killed and the head of the army was badly injured.

The government ordered two days of air strikes on the eastern Trincomalee district in response.

Aid workers on Friday were helping displaced people return to homes.

Geneva pull-out

The Tamil Tigers last week pulled out of what would have been the second round of peace talks in Geneva, accusing the government of attacks on ethnic Tamil civilians.

Three years ago, donors agreed a $4.5bn aid package for Sri Lanka but its disbursement is dependent on progress in the peace process.

HAVE YOUR SAY The international community can play a huge role here Eranda, Stoke, UK Send us your comments

The UN has also expressed concern over the situation.

Before the Oslo talks, UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said: "The loss of life, the new displacement of families, the destruction to businesses and property, as well as threats to humanitarian workers, are creating a climate of fear and tension for civilians."

The situation in Trincomalee district is still very tense, correspondents say, but the longer the lull there continues the more the hope there is that the island will pull itself back from all-out war.

In the Muthur area, where the air strikes took place, the Red Cross has been helping people who fled the area.

The BBC's Soutik Biswas in the Sampoor area has seen a Tamil Tiger training camp destroyed in the government air attacks.

But he says there is no evidence of widespread destruction.

Violence has claimed about 100 lives in the past two weeks

He says the mood among the local Tamil Tigers is angry: "We want to go to war," one fighter, Karialan, told him.

The Tigers say more than 12 civilians were killed in the air strikes.

They said 40,000 people had been displaced but the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees cast doubt on that figure and said "a lot of them are returning home".

Five security personnel were killed in two separate mine attacks on Thursday, the military said.

Meanwhile more details have emerged about Tuesday's suicide bombing.

A government investigator told Associated Press news agency the 21-year-old woman had fake identification claiming she was the wife of an army clerk.

She attended a pregnancy clinic in the military hospital and learned the routine of army chief Lt Gen Sarath Fonseka, the investigator said, before targeting him on Tuesday.

Gen Fonseka is in a stable condition in intensive care.

The Tigers began their armed campaign for a separate homeland for the island's Tamil minority in the north and east in the 1970s.

More than 64,000 people have died in the conflict.