The Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam have consistently demanded they be given access to some of the foreign aid that has poured into the island since the tsunami struck one month ago.

The Sri Lankan government has said aid disbursement should be centralized in its hands for greater efficiency. The Tigers, however, have said insufficient aid was reaching territories under guerrilla control.

``The international community need not deliver aid direct to LTTE,'' said the rebels' top peace negotiator Anton Balasingham.

It was not immediately clear why the rebels had shifted position, but Balasingham's comments came hours before a rebel delegation and government representatives sat together in their first direct meeting on how to use foreign aid for reconstruction.

Most international donors are reluctant to give funds directly to the Tigers, who are banned as a terrorist group in five countries, including the United States and India.

``Parochial politics is out of the equation at this hour,'' Balasingham said in an address published on a rebel Web site. ``Realizing this, we are now engaged in discussions with the government on structuring a common strategy to ensure equitable distribution of the international aid.''

``What we are engaged in now ... is a struggle for economic emancipation that differs from our political freedom struggle at least for the time being,'' Balasingham said.

A rebel delegation traveled to the Sri Lankan capital Friday for the meeting to respond to a government suggestion for a three-tiered system of committees to review project proposals at the district, regional and political levels, officials said.

Still to be decided is who will sit on the committees and how they will function.

Norway, which brokered a truce between the two warring sides three years ago, has been mediating efforts to bring them together to coordinate tsunami relief and reconstruction.

Hans Brattskar, Norway's ambassador, also was expected to participate in the closed-door meeting.

If an agreement is reached, it would mark a significant step: the first collaboration on a political level since peace talks collapsed in April 2003.

The rebels began fighting in 1983 to create a separate state for Sri Lanka's 3.2 million Tamils, accusing the country's 14 million Sinhalese of discrimination. A 2002 Norwegian-brokered truce appeared increasingly tenuous before the tsunami that dealt equal devastation to both sides of the conflict. Published: Fri Jan 28 07:30:23 EST 2005

``We have not recruited any children. These allegations are completely false,'' S. Pulidevan, a top rebel leader, told The Associated Press.

On Thursday, UNICEF said they had verified 40 cases of child recruitment by the rebels, one child as young as 13, and expressed concern that the Tigers had not given up the practice.

Pulidevan said there were scores of children orphaned or displaced after the tsunami who had sought shelter with the Tigers. The rebels run their own administration in the Tamil-dominated north and east.

``They had nowhere to go so they came to us,'' he said. ``We are in the process of verifying the children's' details and will hand the children over to surviving parents and the others to an orphanage.''

Pulidevan expressed regret about the UNICEF accusation and said if such hasty announcements are made again ``it could damage relations,'' with the agency.

Children accounted for a staggering 40 percent, or 12,000, of Sri Lanka's tsunami death toll of nearly 31,000. Another 800,000 people have been left homeless.

The rebels are known to recruit children - some as young as 10 - to bolster their ranks in their fight for a separate Tamil homeland. Peace talks stalled two years ago amid demands by the rebels for wide autonomy in the Tamil-dominated north and east.

Since the rebels signed a truce with the Sri Lankan government in 2002, more than 3,500 children have been enlisted by the insurgents, according to human rights groups. Published: Fri Jan 28 04:39:38 EST 2005