Celigny,(Switzerland): Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) begin two days of talks in Switzerland on Wednesday.
The talks are the first direct contact between the two sides since the Tigers walked out of negotiations nearly three years ago.
At stake is the four-year-old ceasefire agreement. Nearly 200 people including government soldiers in Sri Lanka have died in clashes since last December.
A key demand of the Tigers could be the disbanding of the fighters of Karuna one of their commanders who later defected to the government.
Sri Lanka's chief negotiator Nimal Siripala de Silva and his counterpart from the Tamil Tiger rebel group, Anton Balasingham, stood closer together at the request of photographers after Norwegian peace broker Erik Solheim invited them to mark the start of the meeting.
The meeting has drawn seven government delegates and 11 from the rebel side, plus 10 Norwegian peace brokers.
The venue, the Chateau de Bossey near Geneva, was off limits to outsiders and the media after the two-day talks got under way Wednesday morning.
The government and the LTTE agreed to an initial photo opportunity and a closing statement on Thursday, said Norwegian diplomats.
Norway, which is Sri Lanka's peacebroker, arranged the talks here after both sides, who haven't met since 2003, spent months wrangling over a venue.
Diplomats close to the process have said they did not expect a breakthrough in Celigny, but that they believed they could get a deal on further meetings.
Solheim, Oslo's minister for international development, told reporters: "We should be realistic. The outcome of the talks should be to strengthen the ceasefire agreement and the two parties will hopefully meet again."
(With AFP inputs)
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