Sri Lanka's warring parties resumed peace talks in Geneva on Saturday and received a stern warning that their country will lose foreign aid unless killings stop in Asia's bloodiest internal conflict.
Peace broker Norway said the international community had virtually placed the Sri Lankans on notice to show progress in efforts to resolve the long-running separatist conflict, which has claimed over 60,000 lives since 1972.
"We have shown a lot of patience and we are prepared to show more, but the people in Sri Lanka and the international community will be impatient," Norway's International Development Minister Erik Solheim said.
Kicking off the negotiations, Solheim said the island risked losing huge foreign aid and goodwill unless the government and Tamil Tiger rebels worked towards a final deal based on a federal formula agreed in December 2002.
Sri Lanka's government marked a major shift in its policy by agreeing to a power-sharing arrangement "consistent with regional geo-political realities," Colombo's chief negotiator Nimal Siripala de Silva said in his statement to the talks.
Officials said the government was deviating from its earlier policy of sticking to the unitary character of the state and was now amenable to a federal system similar to the Indian model.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) want a separate state for the island's ethnic Tamil minority.
Chief rebel negotiator S. P. Thamilselvan skirted the issue of politics in his statement, demanding foreign pressure on the Sri Lankan government to implement their 2002 truce.
He said only the implementation of the cease-fire and strengthening of Scandinavian truce monitoring mission will "help in taking forward the peace process towards a satisfactory conclusion."
As the two sides met at Geneva's International Conference Centre for the first time in eight months, sporadic violence at home left a soldier dead and six policemen wounded, reports from the island said.
Sri Lankan authorities blamed the Tigers for the latest violence and stepped up security across the capital, Colombo, officials said.
Speaking on behalf of key international backers, including the US, European Union and Japan, Solheim said the number of people killed on the island in the past eight months exceeded the toll in the war that devastated Lebanon in July and August this year.
Official figures show that about 3,000 people have been killed since the two parties met in Switzerland in February and agreed to scale down violence. Solheim said both had failed to keep their promises.
He blamed the government and the Tigers for the bloodshed and reminded that it was an "un-winnable war".
Diplomats expect the two-day meeting here will simply buy time with an agreement for more talks in December and January.
Solheim said Saturday's gathering was "a small ray of hope, at least a step in the right direction".
After presenting lengthy opening statements, the talks broke for lunch then resumed for a second session based on initial statements, diplomats said.
Both sides are under international pressure to address human rights issues, with civilians increasingly caught up in fighting and also being targeted for attack.
Solheim noted that renewed fighting had displaced over 200,000 people within the island.
"We would consider the outcome of the talks a success only if we can get the humanitarian issues sorted out over the weekend," Thamilselvan told AFP before the start of Saturday's meeting.
Thamilselvan said that failure of the Swiss talks could lead to "real, real war" in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka's only woman negotiator, Fariel Ashraff, who represents a minority Muslim party, said she expected both parties to show flexibility despite rigid positions taken publicly.
Sri Lanka's fighting has become the worst currently occurring in Asia despite a 2002 truce that initially raised hopes of peacefully ending the conflict.