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| Sunday, 24 November 2002 |
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PM takes top-level team to Oslo by Arjuna Ranawana in Oslo The biggest ever Sri Lanka-centred international conference convenes tomorrow amid the snows of a picturesque mountain resort overlooking the Norwegian capital to pledge support for the country's on-going peace process. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, his delegation including five Ministers and the LTTE delegation led by Tiger chief negotiator Dr. Anton Balasingham will engage with delegations from nearly 40 countries at the exclusive Holmenkollen Park Hotel nestling in mountains high above Oslo, just 30-minutes' drive away from down-town. The USA Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the British Minister for International Development Claire Short, Japanese Special Envoy former UN Under Secretary Yasushi Akashi, Thai Deputy Foreign Minister Pracha Guna-Kasem, Canadian State Secretary David Kilgour, European Union Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Petersen and International Development Minister Hilde Frafjord Johnson are the high level officials at the meet. These officials as well as a delegation from Germany will be coming into Norway especially for this meeting, while Oslo-based diplomats will represent the other countries. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, accompanied by Ministers, Rauff Hakeem, Noordeen Mashoor and a team of officials arrived on Saturday afternoon from Sri Lanka. Ministers Prof. G.L. Peiris and Milinda Moragoda were to arrive later in the evening. The Prime Minister is due have a one-to-one meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik, Japanese envoy Akashi, the USA's Armitage, the UK's Short and LTTE's Dr. Balasingham on the sidelines of the conference. The meeting will focus on extending moral and political support for the peace process and will exert a degree of political pressure on the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE to continue on the path towards peace. Diplomats say there is the likelihood of some urgent assistance being pledged for the rehabilitation of war-ravaged areas in Sri Lanka at the conference. Assistance for Sri Lanka for humanitarian de-mining of civilian zones will also be discussed. The meeting will set the stage for a bigger conference to plan assistance to Sri Lanka to be held in Japan shortly. The Holmenkollen is a 108-year old building that was built above the city of Oslo initially as a sanatorium for recuperating patients. It was converted to a modern hotel just before the Second World War and developed into a conference centre in 1982 for the World Skiing Championships, which took place on a slope a few hundred meters from the hotel. The third round of Government-LTTE peace talks will be held here from December 1 onwards. An aerial view of the venue of the conference near Oslo. *** PA charges rejected Norway's Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen, who will host the talks, said the "peace support" conference to be attended by about 20 nations from India to the United States would raise money for everything to helping child victims of the fighting to building better roads. Helgesen also rejected charges last week by Sri Lanka's main opposition party, the People's Alliance of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, that Norway unfairly favoured the rebels in the talks. "We believe that is definitely not the case," he said. "In many ways it's inevitable that we will be seen as biased towards the other party because we take the middle ground." |
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