Diplomats will try to boost humanitarian aid for Sri Lanka this week despite a political fight between the president and Prime Minister that has sidelined the island?s peace process.

Yasushi Akashi, Japan?s special envoy to Sri Lanka, arrives today for meetings, including a follow-up to last June?s Tokyo donor conference that raised $4.5 billion. Most of that money was tied to progress on permanently ending the two-decade civil war, but a power struggle between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has stalled efforts to restart peace talks that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) walked away from last April.

Diplomats from more than a dozen countries will also take part in a separate meeting in Kilinochchio. The LTTE will ask for quicker rehabilitation in the north and east, the worst-hit areas in the war, which has killed 64,000 people. Aid officials say that there is a push to get humanitarian aid flowing despite the political crisis and lack of peace talks.

Despite a ceasefire holding for two years, efforts to end the conflict were complicated when Kumaratunga took over three ministries in November, accusing Wickremesinghe of mishandling the peace bid. The first major aid package for the north and east since the Tokyo conference last June was approved last month -- a $100 million Asian Development Bank loan package that builds on small-scale infrastructure projects, including repairing schools and restoring water supply.

Poverty rates in the north and east are as high as 70 to 90 percent, compared with 25 percent in other parts of the country.

Scott McDonald