The private Sunday Island newspaper quoted Lakshman Kadirgamar as saying that Norway -- asked by Sri Lanka in January 2000 to help mediate an end to decades of civil war -- must be seen as impartial.

"I have always raised it with them (Norwegians), in the form of putting to them that the perception of impartiality was very important," the minister told the newspaper. "That is a question they ought to address."

Norway arranged a ceasefire with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in February 2002 which led to six rounds of peace talks that were suspended in April 2003.

The fragile ceasefire remains in place. The two sides last month also reached an agreement jointly to distribute billions of dollars in international aid after the December 26 tsunamis killed nearly 31,000 people and left one million homeless.

The LTTE has been fighting since 1972 for a separate state in a war that claimed more than 60,000 lives.

The comments by Kadirgamar, a member of the minority Tamil community, follow his statement last week that Norway has not pushed hard enough for democracy in rebel-controlled areas in the north and east.

"The movement for democracy in certain districts of the north and east must begin to roll," Kadirgamar wrote in the state-run Daily News last week.

"If the government of Norway is unable to plead this cause with the conviction and determination that it deserves, it should stand aside and yield to other parties who could carry the flag of democracy into areas where darkness presently prevails." There has been no reaction from Norway to Kadirgamar's attacks.