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By Ranga Jayasuriya

The Government has submitted to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission a report on its stance over the LTTE demand for access to the islands off Jaffna which it declared as "military zones". But the LTTE has disagreed with certain modalities put forward by the Government in the report, SLMM Deputy Chief Hugrup Haukland told the Daily News yesterday.

"The LTTE did not accept the document, so the issue has reached a stalemate," Haukland said.

The LTTE has been requesting Government's permission to enter the islands off Jaffna to commence "political work". But the islands were declared "military zones" by the Government which reserves "the right to deny entry to specific military areas" under Article 1.11 of the Ceasefire Agreement.

The SLMM which received 12 new monitors last week expects to receive two more monitors on June 2 and 10 more within next two weeks. Meanwhile, SLMM Chief Gen Trond Furuhevde who returned from Norway on May 25 said his discussions with Norwegian representatives concentrated on increasing the number of monitors.

Gen Furuhevde met Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen during his visit, but when asked whether his meeting with Helgesen focused on the proposed peace talks in Bangkok scheduled for June, he said "no".

The SLMM expects to deploy its monitors in Navy and LTTE vessels by early June. "The need for Naval monitors was felt since the inception of the monitoring mission," Haukland said in a previous interview with the Daily News. 

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