New Delhi
8 December 2005
Oslo will be willing to resume its role as a
facilitator of the Sri Lankan peace process if Colombo and the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are "serious" and "respected the ceasefire,"
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.
He told a select group of reporters ahead of his meeting with Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh that the new Sri Lankan president, Mr Mahinda
Rajapakse, has asked Norway to "continue to facilitate [the] peace
dialogue."
"We are following [the situation] very closely. We are prepard to continue
if both parties are serious," Mr Stoltenberg said. He emphasised that
Norway's intervention would "completely depend on willingness of
parties."
"I that is the case," he continued, "then we are ready to facilitate." He
explained that Norway has and will remain neutral and that Oslo did not
want to "force or impose" a solution of the conflict in the island nation.
"We are not taking sides," Mr Stoltenberg said in response to a question
on allegations about Oslo's proximity to the LTTE. He also denied media
reports about Norway's "economic support" to the LTTE.
Asserting that "we are there as long as both parties [in the Sri Lankan
peace process] want us to be there," the premier said a challenge before
Norway was to "get [the peace process] back on track."
Norway, he said, would sit down with both parties and recalled his
country's long tradition of facilitating conflicts around the world to observe
optimism on restarting the stalled peace process in Sri Lanka.
Mr Stoltenberg said India has a role to play in the peace process. "There
is a very close dialogue between Norway and India and my visit [offers]
direct dialogue with Government of India," he said.
Norway's minister of international development Eric Solheim recently
visited New Delhi for talks with National Security Adviser MK Narayanan
and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran. His visit came barely a day after the
new Sri Lankan foreign minister, Mr Mangala Samaraweera, called on
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi.
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