Sri Lanka names senior government official to head cease-fire talks with Tamil rebels

Photo: Sri Lanka names senior government official to head cease-fire talks with Tamil rebels

Kohona, who has headed the government's Peace Secretariat since February this year, will lead the government delegation at the June 8-9 talks in Norway, the government said in a statement. Prior to his appointment to the secretariat, he spent 10 years overseas in charge of the United Nations Treaty Office.

"So far as we are concerned, we are ready for the talks," Kohona told The Associated Press after his appointment.

The separatist Tamil Tiger rebels last week agreed to attend the June 8-9 talks in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

Norway proposed the talks to review the monitoring of the 2002 cease-fire which appears increasingly fragile due to recent violence that has left an estimated 374 people dead since the start of April.

Separately, Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, was scheduled to meet with President Mahindra Rajapakse later Thursday, the Presidential Secretariat said in a statement, the AP reports.

In a statement earlier this week, the U.S. Embassy said Boucher planned to discuss the political climate in Sri Lanka and "review the state of bilateral relations." The statement did not elaborate.

The rebels began fighting for a separate, independent homeland for minority Tamils in 1983, saying they were discriminated against by the majority Sinhalese. The conflict left more than 65,000 people dead before the cease-fire.