Reacting to the veiled warning from Tokyo, the Sri Lankan government told the Japanese envoy that it does not contemplate banning the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at present, though the ceasefire agreement (CFA) with the rebel group is set to formally end Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama conveyed Sri Lanka's view to Japanese peace envoy Yasushi Akashi when they met in Colombo on January 14th, a foreign ministry communiqué said. Bogollagama told Akashi that there was no need to proscribe the LTTE "at the present time" as there was sufficient legal infrastructure already in place to tackle the menace of terrorism. "The political process is very much on track," Bogollagama told Akashi.

Apparently alluding to news reports quoting Akashi as saying that international development assistance to Sri Lanka might not be forthcoming if the war continued, Bogollagama cautioned against any international action that could jeopardize the government's initiatives in the peace process and trigger increased violence in the country.

Japan has been playing an informal but important role as a mediator in the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. It organized an international donors' conference in Tokyo in 2003 to extend a development aid package worth $4.5 billion if the Sri Lanka government and the Tigers showed progress towards peace and a negotiated settlement.

Japan, along with US, EU, Britain and Norway, was a co-chair of the Tokyo conference. The co-chairs eventually came to be identified as the "international community" in the search for peace in Sri Lanka. However, no progress was made on the peace front and the huge aid package remained largely unused. Nevertheless, Japan continued to render bilateral developmental assistance to the Sri Lankan government saying that the continued conflict could not be allowed to adversely affect the life of the common man in the island.

One of the unstated reasons for this stance was that the LTTE had consistently spurned Japan's offer of aid contemptuously saying that it was "cheque book diplomacy" and a clever way of trapping the Tamil movement for independence. LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran had refused to meet Akashi though he is a very senior Japanese diplomat who has handled top UN assignments earlier.