Sri Lanka?s Tamil Tiger rebels will remain on a US list of banned terrorist groups alongside al Qaeda until they prove they are serious about long-term peace, a top US counter-terrorism official said.

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels and the government are keeping to a two-year truce that stopped two decades of war, but the United States is concerned about a spate of killings in the rebels? eastern stronghold blamed on internecine feuding.

?The LTTE is currently on our list of foreign terrorist organisations, and they are going to remain there until they show by good word and deed that they are negotiating in good faith,? US State Department coordinator for counter-terrorism, Cofer Black, told local media.

?They are in the exalted company of the al Qaeda organisation and the rest of them. It?s a bad place to be,? Black was quoted as saying in reports published yesterday.

A spate of killings and violence in the rebel-held east has strained efforts to resume peace talks between the rebels and the government, which stalled in April last year and are stuck at an impasse.

The Tigers, whose bloody separatist war ravaged swathes of the Indian Ocean island and killed more than 64,000 people, insist minority Tamils be given the right to govern themselves in the north and east before they will discuss a permanent peace.

The government insists the Tigers must agree to sit down and talk peace in parallel with any self-governing deal.