By M.R. Narayan Swamy,

New Delhi, Sep 10 (IANS) The international community overseeing the barely alive peace process in Sri Lanka meets in Brussels Tuesday amid gloom, with indications that violence that has killed hundreds and displaced several thousands might escalate.

Almost everyone agrees that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) will not lie low after being forced out of the strategic eastern town of Sampoor by a government that seems intent on further pushing the military against the Tigers.

But none of the countries constituting the co-chairs to Sri Lanka's peace process (Norway, Japan, the US and the 25-nation European Union) feel that a military solution is possible for a dragging conflict that has claimed over 65,000 lives since 1983.

India, which is in close touch with the co-chairs, more or less shares this assessment.

With renewed military clashes as well as tit-for-tat killings blamed on the government, the Tigers and anti-LTTE groups surging since July, an unprecedented humanitarian crisis has gripped Sri Lanka's north and east where more than 200,000 people, mainly Tamils and Muslims, have been forced to flee their homes.

Over 13,000 men, women and children, mostly from poor families, have also left for India, sailing in fishing vessels that often take up to five hours to reach Tamil Nadu since they end up taking long detours through the rough sea.

If all this was not bad enough, the internationally backed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the Nordic body that oversees the 2002 Norway-brokered ceasefire agreement, is in a limbo following the withdrawal of monitors from Denmark, Finland and Sweden.

All this is bad enough to make it imperative that Colombo and the LTTE need to return urgently to the derailed peace path. But diplomats admit there are hardly any prospects of this, at least in the immediate future.

Sri Lankan officials have declared that President Mahinda Rajapakse is ready to talk, but only with LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, none else. The LTTE has made it clear that it will not talk until Sampoor is returned to it. Neither is likely to happen.

Some of the co-chairs feel that Sri Lanka and the LTTE need to be told of the incentives that will accrue to them if they resume their difficult negotiations. At the same time, there is a feeling that both the government and the Tigers need to be pulled up for the violence and resultant human suffering.

There are other shades of opinion too. One assessment is that Colombo had the moral high ground some time back when the LTTE was on an offensive in the northeast but that is no more so.

According to another, both the LTTE and the government have hardened their stands and this needs a correction. A third assessment, shared by many in India, is that the LTTE will not talk from a position of even perceived weakness.

At the same time, overtly belligerent sections of the Sri Lankan establishment are in a mood to keep pursuing the military offensive because they feel the Tigers have been dealt solid blows and they should not be allowed to relax.

But those who know the Tigers say the LTTE may be down but not out. The group has suffered similar and more serious military setbacks previously too although this is the first time such reverses have taken place following the crippling 2004 split in the outfit and in an international environment that is not to the Tigers' liking.

Clearly, the US, Japan, Norway and the EU need to put their best thinking caps on in Brussels Tuesday.