There were no casualties but police believe the explosions were synchronize d.

"The blasts appear to be organized," said military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe. "We can't say immediately who is responsible."

One explosion in the heart of the city took place in a garbage dump, he sai d.

Two others in the suburban towns of Mt. Lavinia and Nugegoda were near railway tracks, police in the area said, when contacted by telephone. It was not immediately clear if the explosions damaged the tracks.

The other two blasts were near a bus stand and a fertilizer store. Police had commenced investigations.

The explosions took place hours ahead of Norway's top peace envoy Erik Solheim heading to the rebel capital of Kilinochchi for talks with Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, to save Sri Lanka from sliding back to war.

Discuss this story Published: Tue Jan 24 11:15:28 EST 2006

President Mahinda Rajapakse held one-on-one talks with peace envoy Erik Solheim for over an hour, officials involved in the peace process said on condition of anonymity.

Rajapakse had indicated that he was willing to move away from his earlier insistence of talks in an Asian destination, the officials said. The government was now willing to hold talks even in Europe other than the Norwegian capital of Oslo, and the European Union nations in which the rebels have been slapped with travel restrictions, they said.

"The venue is not the most important issue here. It's getting the talks started," Nimal Siripala de Silva, Cabinet spokesman said on Tuesday. "We can be flexible, now it's up to the LTTE." However, the rebels have continued to insist that face-to-face talks with the Sri Lankan government cannot take place anywhere else other than Oslo. Norway, which has been pushing for a compromise has said they are willing to facilitate talks "even on the moon." "The key issue is not the venue, but what they discuss when they meet," Solheim told the Foreign Correspondents' Association on Monday. But the parties have been haggling over the venue for months and any consensus will be seen as a positive move toward peace. Meanwhile, violence in Sri Lanka's north and east continued unabated. A provincial reporter for the Tamil language newspaper Sudar Oli was shot dead on his way to work by unknown gunmen, in Sri Lanka's restive port-town of Trincomalee. Hours later two men were gunned down in separate incidents in the north and east. All three men belonged to Sri Lanka's 3.2 Tamil ethnic minority. Police said the assailants in all three incidents had fled the scene but investigations were continuing.

Solheim is set to hold crucial talks with Tamil Tiger supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran on Wednesday, in the rebel-capital Kilinochchi. The rebels chief negotiator Anton Balasingham, who arrived from his London home to Kilinochchi for the meeting said, "These talks will decide the future of the peace process."

Discuss this story Published: Tue Jan 24 10:12:24 EST 2006

“He was shot on his way to work,” said Rohan Abeywardene, police chief of the region. S. S. Rajan, 37, worked for the Sudar Oli newspaper in the port-town of Trincomalee.

“He used to cover news stories and write political columns,” said V. Danaraj, a shocked sub-editor at the newspaper’s head-office in Colombo.

Abeywardene said the assailant had fled the scene but police had commenced investigations.

In August, unidentified attackers hurled a grenade at the Sudar Oli office in Colombo, killing one person and injuring three others.

Discuss this story Published: Mon Jan 23 23:27:08 EST 2006