COLOMBO -- The leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers made a rare public appearance to deliver a hardline speech at the opening of a police headquarters for the area of the island his guerrillas control, pro-rebel media reported.

The ceremonial opening on Sunday of the police headquarters for "Tamil Eelam", the name the rebels give to their would-be country, could create a backlash in southern Sri Lanka from those opposed to a negotiated end to two decades of ethnic war, Reuters reported.

The speech by Velupillai Prabhakaran, the reclusive leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was littered with references to a nation for Tamils but made no reference to the currently stalled peace process.

"A nation gets its nobility only when its society attains uplift," Prabhakaran was quoted as saying on one of the Tigers' Web sites, www.lttepeacesecretariat.com.

The speech comes just before Japanese special envoy Yasushi Akashi arrives for a Friday meeting to follow up on a June donor conference in Tokyo that raised more than $4.5 billion -- conditional on the peace process -- to rebuild the island.

The Tigers boycotted that meeting, after suspending peace talks in April, and are not expected to take part on Friday.

"There has been no word yet if they will attend," said one Asian diplomat.

Japan is Sri Lanka's biggest aid donor but Japanese officials have said that the LTTE would have to return to peace talks for there to be any meaningful flow of aid to the north and east of the country.

Pictures from the ceremony showed Prabhakaran wearing his trademark military uniform with a cyanide capsule tucked into his shirt pocket.

Tiger soldiers still carry the capsules, which they have to bite into to avoid being captured alive, even though the LTTE and government have been observing a ceasefire since February 2002.

"This is an important turning point in our liberation struggle, an important milestone in the structuring of our homeland," Prabhakaran said of the police force, first set up 10 years ago in the rebel-ruled northern Wanni region.

Prabhakaran's autocratic rule over the LTTE means he is key to any solution to ending the ethnic war that has killed 64,000.

The rebels have said they will respond by the end of this month to a government proposal on how to share power in the island's north and east, raising hopes for fresh negotiations within the next few months.

When talks do resume, the rebels will be led by political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan, considered closer in thinking to Prabhakaran, instead of the London-based Anton Balasingham, who local media reports say differed from the LTTE boss.

The government proposal offers the Tigers wide powers over rebuilding and resettlement of displaced people, but not control over policing and security.

Opposition groups in the south say Colombo has ceded too much to the rebels, citing such developments as the LTTE police as proof that their ultimate goal is still a separate state.