Sri Lankan government officials and top Tamil Tiger rebels began two days of talks in Switzerland on Wednesday aimed at halting a slide back into war. The island's Tamil-dominated north and east has been calm since the two sides agreed to meet, but if the Geneva talks collapse, many fear the end of a fragile 2002 truce and a return to a civil war which has killed over 64,000 people, Reuters reported. "There is little confidence ... between the two sides. Confidence can only increase, but it starts at a low level," Norwegian envoy Erik Solheim, who brokered the meeting, told journalists as talks got underway at a chateau outside Geneva.
