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New Delhi, May 11 - Japan's special envoy to Sri Lanka Yasushi Akashi Thursday invited India to participate in the next meeting of the co-chairs to the island's peace process to be held in Tokyo May 30.
Akashi, who has arrived here after a four-day visit of Sri Lanka, briefed National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran on the current status of the faltering peace process and sought India's help in bringing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan government to the negotiating table.
Seeking a more proactive role by India in the peace process, Akashi said his country and other co-chairs, including the US, the European Union and Norway, would 'welcome contribution from India' at their next meeting in Tokyo.
'Akashi also informed the foreign secretary about the forthcoming meeting of the co-chairs in Tokyo on May 30 and said that they would welcome any contribution by India in this regard,' external affairs ministry spokesperson Navtej Sarna told reporters.
'He briefed the foreign secretary on his meetings in Sri Lanka with the government and the LTTE and shared his assessment of the current state of peace process in Sri Lanka,' Sarna said.
Akashi also discussed with the Indian officials how 'countries friendly to Sri Lanka' could help in a way that 'the ceasefire there is strengthened and the process of dialogue between the parties could commence at the earliest'.
Asked about the form this contribution from the Indian side will take, all the spokesperson would say was: 'Let's see how it goes.'
The co-chairs had briefed the Indian ambassador to Norway during their last meeting held in Oslo nearly a month back.
India is not comfortable with the idea of participating in the co-chairs' donors meet as it would involve sitting with the LTTE on the same table.
New Delhi outlawed the LTTE after the assassination of prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, which was suspected to be the handiwork of the Tiger rebels.
Akashi, however, tried to impress on Narayanan and Saran that 'procedural changes' would be made to render participation 'comfortable' for India at the Tokyo meeting, official sources told IANS.
Akashi flew in here from Sri Lanka where he met President Mahindra Rajapakse and S.P. Thamilchelvan, the political wing chief of the LTTE.
LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, however, refused to meet Akashi in what was widely seen as a snub to the co-chairs to Sri Lanka's peace process.
Akashi travelled to LTTE-held Kilinochchi town Tuesday to urge the Tigers to take part in the second round of the Geneva peace talks that were due in April but were indefinitely postponed amid spiralling violence.
Akashi last came to New Delhi in November 2004, just before tsunami hit Sri Lanka including the northeast Asia.
Japan, which hosted an international donors' meet on Sri Lanka in 2003, thinks that economic aid can play a strong if not dominant role in a resolution of the island's decades-old ethnic conflict that has claimed thousands of lives and shows no signs of ending.
International donors have pledged $4.5 billion for reconstruction and rehabilitation of Sri Lanka's war-torn northeast, parts of which are controlled by the LTTE.
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