Before peace negotiation sessions begin (I wasn't there for the last one in Thailand) there is a ritual that is enacted. Even though G. L. Peiris and Anton Balasingham and those team captains come in entourage, you see the figure of Erik Solheim early morning, in and around the conference area, and he is usually twirling his cellphone around his little finger.

He is a tall gangly figure, and you would generally expect someone like him in a volleyball or basketball court than in some conference area in a place called Rose Garden. He has the slightly rumpled manner of a woolly headed schoolmaster, and that is as opposed to the dress and manner of a suave yuppie company executive type. (Vidar Helgesen is more in that latter mould.)

But Solheim may look a little washed out and has-been sometimes, but he is anything but. What does that cliché say, don't go around judging books by their covers?

Solheim, Vidar Helgesen, Jon Westborg and even that other tall and gangly man for all seasons, their understudy Mr Thomas -- these are people caught in some vast in-between in today's Sri Lankan political culture.

They are all wooing the Sri Lankan public, the way Sri Lankan politicians do it except that Solheim cannot do it with posters on the walls of the Bambalapitiya Milk Board. Neither can Solheim appear on television and try to demolish some poor fellow who dares to talk to politicians on the phone at some phone-in talk show.

Even though Solheim wants all Sri Lankans especially the Sinhalese to see him in a good light, he for instance cannot wear the national dress. Most Sri Lankans who want to show the people that they are standing by them discard their slacks and creep into a national suit. Solheim alas does not have this option, and neither can he drape a red colour shawl around is neck.

Vidar Helgesen and Jon Westborg have this problem too -- but they are like new kids on the block compared to Solheim who has the sharp eyes and the ruthlessly focussed looks and manner of …. let me see….. the comparison is at the tip of my tongue……. Oh yes, of Prabhakaran.

You think that is not done, comparing this schoolmasterly but stern Norwegian to a man in the bunker, then you do not know Solheim. Solheim will be flattered with a comparison to Prabhakaran. From the land of the midnight sun, why wouldn't they be flattered being compared to the Sun god? Solheim is a man who has good body language, specially with Anton Balasingham with whom he has a hail-fellow-well-met manner…. and he called him HE (his Excellency) so you can be certain he must be making sure that there are HIS and HERS towels for Bala and Mrs Bala at the Rose Garden digs. Proper monogramming is part of good mediating, the Norwegians are bound to tell you, and that's basic as saying proper equipment is the best part of proper broadcasting.

But, the trick for the Norwegians most of the time is that they must try to look as if they are not too pushy, so that they are not accused of neo - colonialism and all those unkind things. So they try to disappear into the furniture, and this they try to do by being dressed as plainly as possible to merge into the furniture, or at least to the accompanying scenery. This is why this whole team including Helgesen and Thomas and the lot wore shirts unbuttoned at top, and the un-smartest of casuals for a conference with government officials at the Jaffna kachcheri building.

But compared to what the government officials were wearing in war ravaged Jaffna, the men from Oslo in their relatively tony blue shirts soon began to look as conspicuous as the back of a bus. The Norwegians have always been telling us that this peacemaking is a very tough thankless business, why don't we believe them?

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