Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar said Thursday that the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) still have not reached an agreement to handle tsunami relief in the North and East.

He said the mechanism would be set up for the limited purpose of coordinating relief supplies to the tsunami tidal wave victims in the Tamil regions.

Kadirgamar told the media that the government treats people living even in the rebel held areas as citizens of Sri Lanka and there was no discrimination.

He said the proposed joint mechanism between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government would not be a "sellout" to the LTTE.

There have been frantic efforts by the international community more particularly the Norwegian peace facilitators to set up a joint mechanism.

The government said the tragedy has provided the two sides a good opportunity to revive the stalled peace negotiations aimed at arriving at a permanent solution to the ethnic conflict that had claimed over 64,000 lives since the mid 1980s.
 
(Xinhua News Agency April 8, 2005)