Sri Lanka said today it received an offer of talks with Tamil Tiger rebels two days ago and was keen to agree, but with fighting continuing in the north the prospect of any imminent negotiations still seemed faint.
The government says it received a message from the Tigers through ceasefire monitors on Friday, hours before fighting erupted on the Jaffna peninsula at the island's northern tip. It has become the worst violence since a 2002 ceasefire.
"A message was received that the Tigers offered peace talks," head of the government peace secretariat Palitha Kohona said. "We accepted. The Tigers also wanted to know if there were any conditions. We said there would be no conditions but since then there has been no response."
Yesterday the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) broke through army defences on the army-held peninsula, where some 40,000 troops, mainly from the Sinhalese majority, are based in a Tamil-dominated area cut off from the rest of the island by rebel territory.
A diplomatic source said they were aware that a communication was passed to the government on Friday but said it seemed to have yielded nothing. The LTTE pulled out of talks in April.
"There was a communication but I understand that nothing came of it," he said on condition of anonymity.
Telephone contact with Jaffna is extremely difficult. A senior army source in the area said that the night had been relatively quiet but that the military had launched an operation around first light.
The military said Sea Tigers had attacked positions on a navy-held island. Aid workers reported heavy shelling, but truce monitors said fighting seemed slightly less than on Saturday when the army said 27 of its personnel were killed and 87 wounded.
"The area is now totally under control," an army spokesman said. "We have pushed them back behind their FDL (forward defence line)."
Truce monitors said they believed the LTTE were trying to cut supply lines to Jaffna, which has changed hands several times in two decades of a bitter war that has killed more than 65,000 people.
The birthplace of most of the rebel leadership and cultural centre of their fight for a homeland for minority Tamils, Jaffna has long been seen as a key Tiger objective. Some diplomats believe the LTTE want to move closer before going to peace talks.