The death of at least 92 people after suspected Tamil Tiger terrorists drove a truck packed with explosives into a naval convoy threatens to derail planned peace talks.

In recent weeks and months, international diplomats have redoubled their efforts to bring both sides to the negotiating table in order to avert a fresh outbreak of civil war.

Thanks mainly to Norway, the government in Colombo and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known as the Tamil Tigers, signed a truce in 2002. The ceasefire brought a respite after two decades of civil strife that has claimed some 64,000 lives and forced a million people to flee their homes.

The Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority in the north and east, citing decades of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese.

Immediately after the 2002 truce, the Tigers relaxed their demand for a separate homeland, but peace prospects took a blow when they withdrew from peace talks in 2003. Even the Indian Ocean tsunami at the end of 2004, which killed more than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka, failed to bring the two sides together. A deal to share international aid has still not been implemented.

The loss of political momentum proved fatal and violence has surged since the end of last year following the November election of the hardline president Mahinda Rajapakse, who ruled out autonomy for Tamils in the north and east and promised to review the peace process.

Fighting this year has left about 2,000 people dead, according to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, set up to oversee the ceasefire.

Today's attack was the bloodiest incident since the 2002 ceasefire.

But it follows heavy battles last week on the northern Jaffna peninsula which left hundreds of combatants dead, despite commitments by both the government and rebels to return to the negotiating table.

The Sri Lankan military controls nearly all of the Jaffna Peninsula, which the Tamil minority claim as their cultural heartland.

Today's attack coincided with renewed international diplomatic efforts to bring the two sides together at the negotiating table later this month in Geneva. Only today, an envoy from Japan - Sri Lanka's main aid donor - held talks with the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapakse, in preparation for Geneva.

Yasushi Akashi had also planned to travel to the rebel stronghold in the north to talk with the Tiger leadership during his five days in Sri Lanka.

Other envoys were also planning to pitch in. The Norwegian peace envoy, Jon Hanssen-Bauer, and the US assistant secretary of state for central and south Asian affairs, Richard Boucher, were both due to visit Sri Lanka this week.

Thorfinnur Omarsson, a spokesman for the Sri Lanka monitoring mission, urged the government and rebels to keep their commitment to the peace talks despite today's carnage. "Obviously this is a brutal attack and a serious threat to the peace process," Mr Omarsson said. "But the people of Sri Lanka deserve that the talks will take place as planned."

Even before today's bloodletting, talks between the government and the Tigers made little progress. Negotiations in Geneva in February turned into a slanging match about truce violations and the rebels pulled out of a second round in April. There have been no meetings since and the talks for October 28-29 must be in serious jeopardy.

British colonial policy of divide and rule has contributed to tensions between the Sinhalese majority, who are mainly Buddhist, and the Tamil minority, who are mostly Muslim. Tamils were given a disproportionate number of top jobs in the civil service by the British when they ruled what was Ceylon from 1815 to 1948, when the country gained its full independence.

Once the Sinhalese were in power, Sinhalese politicians sought to redress the balance with populist but discriminatory policies against Tamils.

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