The Sri Lankan government said Wednesday that the efforts to revive the stalled peace process with the Tamil Tiger rebels was still underway despite the ongoing violence.

The Policy Planning Minister and the government's defense spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told reporters that the Norwegian peace facilitators are still on the job.

Rambukwella said Norwegian special peace envoy Jon Hanssen- Bauer has arrived here Wednesday in order to revive the effort and the Norway's Minister of International Development, Erik Solheim is also due on Friday.

"The government wants to take forward the process but the signals coming from the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) rebels were not good," Rambukwella said.

He blamed the Tigers for continuing with their acts of violence and said that they were trying to cause a large influx of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees into the neighboring south India so that the rebels could take advantage of "complexities in Indian politics."

The escalation of violence in the north and east have prompted refugees to flee to India mostly from small islets in the northern Jaffna peninsula.

The government maintains that refugee influx was caused by rebels threats on civilian population.

The LTTE has accused the government of killing Tamil civilians in the region by using alleged para military groups.

The upsurge of violence since December last year has endangered the Norwegian backed ceasefire and in April alone some 200 people were killed due to various acts of violence blamed both on the rebels and the government troops.

More than 64,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka's separatist conflict since mid 1980s.

Source: Xinhua