Sri Lanka's warring parties are due to meet in Geneva on Saturday amid international pressure to stop a new spiral of killings in Asia's bloodiest civil strife.
Norwegian peace brokers were shuttling between two separate hotels where representatives of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan government were staying to try and prepare an agenda for the two-day meeting, the first face-to-face talks in eight months.
Norway's special envoy Jon Hanssen-Bauer was conducting discussions with both parties, diplomats said.
The rebels and Sri Lanka's government are returning to the table they left eight months ago pledging to scale down violence. Instead, nearly 3,000 people have been killed since the last Swiss talks in February, and more than 200,000 people have fled their homes.
Sporadic clashes were reportedly continuing in Sri Lanka, but there were no major casualties.
Advocacy groups and other governments are pushing the Sri Lankan antagonists to spare civilians and resurrect a February 2002 truce arranged by Norway, which is struggling to keep the peace process alive, diplomats said.
The chief negotiator of the Tamil Tigers, S. P. Thamilselvan, said they wanted humanitarian issues, including the opening of a key highway to the northern Jaffna peninsula, taken up ahead of contentious political issues.
"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 just before a meeting with Hanssen-Bauer. "We want the killings to stop and normalcy restored. That includes getting the A-9 (highway to Jaffna) open and the 'mass prison conditions' ended."
The highway, the only land access to the area, has been shut since August 11, when the rebels launched an attack against government troops in the Jaffna peninsula.
"Human rights issues are very much a part of the core (political) issues we want to discuss," said Sri Lankan government chief negotiator Nimal Siripala de Silva. "We should get down to these core issues."
Neither side expects a breakthrough from the two-days of talks. Diplomats involved in the process believe that getting an agreement to meet again might be a good outcome given the level of mistrust between the parties.
The shutting of the Jaffna highway has led to virtual siege conditions in the peninsula where some half a million people are unable to move freely. Supplies are also running low.
The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Thursday that they want the Sri Lankan parties to address humanitarian issues saying the situation was "pretty disastrous."
Relief workers themselves have paid a high price in Sri Lanka. Seventeen local staff of a French charity were killed in August during a battle between troops and Tigers. Truce monitors have blamed troops who in turn accuse the Tigers.
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch urged both parties to put a stop to "rampant" rights abuses in the island where more than 60,000 people have been killed since 1972.
Tamil Tiger rebels who took up arms in 1972 want a separate state for the island's ethnic Tamil minority.
Full political talks on power-sharing remain on hold since April 2003 while the February 2006 Swiss talks focused only on saving the truce.
Sri Lanka's key international backers -- the European Union, Japan, Norway and the United States -- had pressured both parties to end the impasse in the peace process and meet here.
The run-up to the talks saw some of the bloodiest fighting. Over 250 people were killed in two weeks of suicide bombings and face-to-face fighting.
"The staging of the talks is a mini victory for the international community," said Sri Lankan defence analyst Namal Perera of the Ravaya newspaper. "We can see a lull in fighting in the past few days, but keeping it up might be a big challenge."