In the countdown to the July 29-31 summit, thousands of Sri Lankan security personnel, drawn from the army, navy, air force and police are expected to descend on the capital as the government braces itself for the responsibility of the well-being and safety of four prime ministers, two presidents and a king.

Taj Samudra Hotel, where all the delegations will stay, is to be a no-go zone for everyone else. In fact, the entire one km stretch of seafront road on which the hotel is located will be ``sterilised'', in other words closed, for the duration of the summit. Journalists wishing to meet members of any of the delegations at the hotel will need to go through an elaborate procedure ofpermissions and passes.

Sri Lanka is expecting a large contingent of international journalists for the occasion, not so much to cover the SAARC summit as for the mother of all bilaterals, the expected meeting between Prime Ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif which is to take place on July 29.

The very thought of dealing with scores, if not hundreds, of aggressive reporters and photographers, each vying for exclusives, is giving planners here nightmares. A marathon meeting was held on Thursday at the information department just to discuss how to keep journalists and security away from each others throats.

The last occasion on which this city saw unparalleled security was during the February 4 golden jubilee celebrations of Sri Lanka at which several world dignitaries including Britain's Prince Charles were present. An LTTE bomb attack days before the event necessitated changing the venue of the celebrations at the eleventh hour from the temple town of Kandy in central Sri Lanka to thenational capital creating logistical havoc.

Residents of the capital, who have lived with the terrorist threat of the Tamil Tigers for 15 years, had never seen anything like it before and breathed a sigh of relief when the VIPs finally departed.

Several roads were closed down in the days immediately before and after the event and due to the near-impossibility of movement, the government declared a two-day holiday for its offices in certain areas and private employers had to follow suit. There was an unofficial curfew on Independence Day with a total ban on vehicular traffic. The situation might be similar for the summit. Roads around the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH), where the opening ceremony is to be held, will be sealed as will the area around the Presidential secretariat, where the closing session will be held. A sea resort south of the capital is the venue for the retreat on July 30 and it is expected that movement along the highway to the resort, located on Sri Lanka'swestern seaboard, will be restricted at least for that day.

Already, the government has ordered the closure of several schools in the capital from July 21 till the end of the month in order to accommodate the large number of troops and policemen who will arrive from other parts of the country for the security operations. More schools will shut down from July 27.

Security in Colombo was handed over to the army after the LTTE bomb attack at the Galadari and Hilton hotels last October. Since then, there have been other bomb attacks in the capital. The last such incident was on March 6, in which 35 people were killed.