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Sri Lanka plans to resettle most of the 280,000 refugees who
fled the war with the defeated Tamil Tigers within six months, the
government said after meeting visiting Indian officials.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and National Security
Advisor MK Narayan met President Mahinda Rajapaksa, after Sri Lanka
declared total victory in a 25-year war over the Tamil Tigers in
which India's role has always loomed large.
Sri Lanka said on Monday it had totally defeated the separatist
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), ending a war long viewed
as unwinnable.
During the relentless offensive, troops freed more than 280,000
civilians whom the United Nations had said the Tigers were holding
as human shields.
"The Government of Sri Lanka indicated that it was their intention
to dismantle the relief camps at the earliest and outlined a
180-day plan to resettle the bulk of (refugees) to their original
places of habitation," a joint statement said.
The Tigers had said the government planned to hold people
indefinitely in what it dubbed "concentration camps".
Sri Lanka has said it needs to keep people inside the camps long
enough to weed out potential Tiger infiltrators, and the United
Nations has since said the camps meet international standards aside
from the limited freedom of movement.
India has always paid keen attention to the war because Sri Lankan
Tamils have close ties to the 60 million Tamils who live in the
south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and it has had to walk a delicate
line in supporting the military campaign.
India committed to provide assistance for demining, civil
infrastructure and reconstruction of houses, the statement
said.
Sri Lanka also committed to begin implementing devolution of
political power to Tamils as laid out in the 22-year-old Indo-Sri
Lanka Accord, which India brokered four years after the first phase
of the civil war erupted in 1983.
"The government of Sri Lanka also intends to begin a broader
dialogue with all parties including Tamil parties in the new
circumstances, for further enhancement of political arrangements to
bring about lasting peace and reconciliation," the statement
said.
Rajapaksa offered compromise and reconciliation to Tamils in his
victory speech on Tuesday, in which he said the defeat of the LTTE
should not be construed as a defeat of Tamils, and again on
Thursday.
In a statement on Thursday, he said: "Ensuring that the nation's
outpouring of joy at the defeat of terrorism leaves no room for
anyone's feelings to be hurt in any manner is the greatest tribute
we can pay to our motherland."
"Let us all stand together, strong and united in victory."
The LTTE formed in the 1970s as Tamils turned to guerrilla violence
to fight discrimination meted out by governments led by the
Sinhalese majority, and the Tigers eventually took total control by
violently wiping out competing groups.
Tamils lost their favoured status under the British colonial
government when it handed power over to the Sinhalese majority at
independence in 1948.
India at first armed and trained the LTTE, but later had its
fingers burned when the Tigers turned on Indian peacekeepers
deployed in Sri Lanka from 1987-1990.
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