COLOMBO, Feb. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse late Friday commended the government peace delegation to Geneva for ending the truce talks on a successful note and getting dates fixed for another round of discussions in mid-April.

    The president pointed out that the truce talks have allayed fears of war as pessimistically predicted by the opposition parties during the last Presidential Election held in Nov. 17, 2005.

    "The government knows that the road to usher in peace to the country is a difficult one. The government is fully determined to move forward on this difficult path by safeguarding the country's dignity," a government Information Department news release quoted Rajapakse as saying Friday night.

    The government hopes that the agreement to hold the next round of talks between the parties in Geneva on April 19-21, is an important constructive step towards the future, the release said.

    For the first time in history the government was able to reach a consensus among all Southern political parties obtaining their views and the government was able to create a situation where an honourable peace would prevail among all, it added.

    The government and the Tamil Tiger rebels ended their two-day talks on Thursday and promised to end all violent acts against each other.

    "The government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are committed to taking all necessary measures to ensure that there will be no intimidation, acts of violence, abductions or killings," said a statement issued after the talks, held in an ancient chateau near Geneva.

    Read by Norwegian mediator Erik Solheim, who has been Norwegian special peace envoy on Sri Lanka since 2000, the statement also said that the two parties were committed to respecting and upholding a Norway-brokered ceasefire agreement, which had been violated many times.

    According to Solheim, Norway's minister for international development, the two parties held very hard, tough but realistic talks.

    They had serious discussions on strengthening the four year-oldceasefire and confidence had been built between them after the talks, Solheim said.

    "Now the two sides will go back to Sri Lanka and implement what they have agreed during the talks," said Solheim, adding that a monitoring mission will report on implementation of the above-mentioned agreements at the next session of talks.

    The Switzerland-hosted talks were the first face-to-face meeting between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers since April 2003.

    The government, after the August 2005 assassination of the then Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, had called for talks to review and amend the February 2002 ceasefire agreement.

    But the move came to be deadlocked over the choice of the venue.The government opted for an Asian venue while the LTTE insisted onthe Norwegian capital of Oslo.

    The ceasefire was under severe strain particularly since the beginning of December 2005. Nearly 100 soldiers were killed in claymore mine explosions blamed on the Tamil Tiger rebels.

    Solheim made a breakthrough in the Sri Lankan peace process with the government and the LTTE agreeing to have direct talks in Geneva, ending a long standing deadlock over the venue of the talks.

    The LTTE rebels had been fighting against government forces foran independent Tamil homeland in the north and east since 1983 until they entered into a Norwegian-brokered peace process in February 2002.

    The peace talks aimed to end the two-decade civil war in the island nation, were stalled in April 2003 after six rounds of talks between the government and the LTTE.

    The peace talks reached a deadlock after the LTTE rebels demanded to set up an interim power structure for the war-torn north and east of the country. Enditem