Sri Lanka's government and rebel negotiators headed to Switzerland on Tuesday for talks aimed at saving a troubled cease-fire after 10 months of fighting killed more than 3,000 people, officials said.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government are under heavy diplomatic pressure to lift an eight-month impasse in the peace process as the international community grows increasingly concerned over Sri Lanka's slide towards all-out war.
Even without an agenda for the October 28-29 meetings, Sri Lanka's donors want the two sides to at least sit down together in a bid to put a halt to the wave of bloodletting.
The LTTE delegation, led by political wing chief S. P. Thamilselvan, travelled by military helicopter from the rebel-held town of Kilinochchi to Colombo international airport and was due to fly out shortly, the Tigers said.
Ambassador Hans Brattskar of Norway, the island's peace broker, accompanied the rebel delegation.
Government defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said security was assured for the Tiger delegation to transit through the island's only international airport.
"We have guaranteed security for them," Rambukwella said.
Several Sri Lankan delegates flew out Tuesday and the remainder would follow Wednesday, officials said.
Administrative issues and the logistics of transporting the guerrillas to the airport had earlier threatened to scuttle the entire process with details assuming political significance.
Unlike in previous rounds of negotiations, the two sides will not sleep under the same roof in Geneva. Neither Colombo nor the Tigers have officially announced their teams although both are taking over a dozen delegates each to Geneva.
The two sides met in Switzerland in February and agreed to scale down violence and meet again in April, but both promises fell by the wayside. A subsequent meeting in June was aborted and violence escalated.
In the bloodiest suicide attack against government forces, the Tiger rebels killed at least 116 people, mostly sailors, on October 16 in the north-eastern region of Habarana, according to official figures.
Another 133 soldiers were killed on October 11 when the Tigers resisted a major military offensive against them in the northern peninsula of Jaffna.
The guerrillas also staged a suicide bombing against the southern port of Galle and destroyed several naval craft after killing a sailor and a civilian on October 18.
The government's Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) said 2,735 people, including 664 civilians and 1,346 Tigers had been killed between December 1 and October 10.
UN agencies have also reported that over 200,000 people had been internally displaced as a result of the spiralling violence.