Tamil Tigers fighting to carve out a separate homeland for ethnic minority Tamils in the north and east of the island refused to negotiate with the government citing disagreements among mainstream political parties.
"If the government gets its proposals right there will be serious pressure on the Tigers to come seriously into talks," Cabinet minister and the chairman of the All Party Representatives Committee (APRC), Tissa Vitarana said.
He was addressing the CIMA World Conference in Colombo on peace building in Sri Lanka.
Tamils would be assured their grievances would be addressed by future governments if the APRC yields a set of proposals which the main political parties accept and which are also "reasonably acceptable" to the Tamil speaking people, he said.
The all party representatives committee was established to work out a set of proposals as