The Oslo-backed peace process suffered yet another blow last week when the rebels vowed to resume their campaign for independence and statehood, scrapping a 2002 pledge to agree to a federal solution to end decades of ethnic conflict.

"I don't think there is any possibility to revive the (Norway-backed) peace process," said Sunanda Deshapriya, director of the private Centre for Policy Alternatives think-tank.

"If at all, the parties will have to think of a fresh initiative."

Amid the spiralling violence, which has claimed 4,000 lives since December 2005, Norway's top peace broker Erik Solheim made a fresh call for the two sides to return to the negotiating table.

"Norway is willing to go the extra mile to assist their peace endeavours at their request," he said. "As soon as the parties renew their peace efforts, we will be ready to do all we can to help."

Solheim said Oslo remained in regular contact with Colombo and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) despite the collapse of the last talks between the two in October.

But veteran Sri Lankan diplomat Nanda Godage expressed pessimism that those contacts would ever yield results.

"I don't think Norway has a role in Sri Lanka anymore," Godage told AFP. "They, will, however, continue to ask both sides to re-commit to the peace process."

Godage said neither the government nor the Tamil Tigers would want to attract international condemnation by being the first to declare the process over, but said it was for all practical purposes.

Western diplomats said reading between the lines in Norway's latest call for peace underscored Oslo's frustration at the escalating violence and the moribund state of the peace process.

In June 2003, Sri Lanka's key foreign backers -- Japan, the United States and the European Union -- hailed reconciliation efforts, pledged 4.5 billion dollars in aid to rebuild war-hit areas and described the island as a beacon of hope.

The euphoria has long since evaporated.

Last month, the donors warned of foreign aid cuts unless the south Asian island country showed signs of moving towards a peaceful end to the bloodshed.

Both government officials and diplomats here agreed that neither the Tigers nor the administration of President Mahinda Rajapakse would formally withdraw from the peace process or the truce even though they were all but dead.

"It is not a responsibility that the government or the Tigers would want to take," said a diplomat close to the peace efforts. "Both know that they will antagonise the international community if they do that."

However, both sides have made a mockery of the truce which was the centrepiece of the drive to secure a settlement to Sri Lanka's separatist conflict, which has claimed over 60,000 lives since 1972.

"We were on a path of appeasement earlier," defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said, referring to the previous administration which did not retaliate against rebel attacks.