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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - Source: Reuters
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon toured Sri Lanka's biggest
refugee camp and said the country did not have the resources to
deal with the tens of thousands who fled fighting with Tamil Tiger
rebels.
Ban's trip was the highest-level international visit to Sri Lanka
since the government declared victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels
in a 25-year war.
Ban also flew over the final battleground and met President
Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Ban told Rajapaksa the UN and other international humanitarian
agencies needed immediate and unimpeded access to camps that are
housing 290,000 people who escaped rebel-held areas as a military
onslaught bore down on the separatists.
Ban toured Manik Farm, home to 220,000 refugees living in white
tents, and visited a sparse field hospital for wounded
civilians.
Many refugees complained of overcrowding and said they were not
getting proper medical attention.
"The government is doing its utmost," Ban later told a news
conference. "But the government lacks resources."
Sri Lanka has pledged access to the camps and greater freedom of
movement for residents, but says it needs time to weed out
potential Tamil Tiger infiltrators.
It plans to resettle most of the refugees within six
months.
"We will try to work hard to keep that promise realised," Ban said
as he toured Manik Farm, the country's largest camp.
"They need to be resettled as soon as possible."
Very sad and very moving
Ban called for political reconciliation between the majority
Sinhalese and minorities including Tamils.
"If not history could repeat itself", he said, and there could
be more violence.
Rajapaksa has already pledged to strike a political deal with
Tamils, and said he does not want Sri Lankans viewing the victory
over the Tamil Tigers, who were fighting for a separate homeland,
as a defeat of the Tamil minority.
The Sri Lankan government has already asked for international help
and launched a $151 million appeal with the United Nations to
improve the camps and care for those inside.
Ban took a low-level helicopter flight over the coastal strip where
the last battle was fought.
Seen from the helicopter were craters filled with water, burned-out
vehicles, uprooted and smashed trees and closely packed tents that
appeared abandoned in a hurry.
"It was a very sobering visit, very sad and very moving," Ban said
of the scene of the battle.
Ban and other UN officials repeatedly criticised the government and
Tamil Tigers during the final months of the war, saying the actions
of both had resulted in unnecessary deaths of thousands of Sri
Lankans trapped in the conflict zone.
Unofficial and unverified UN tallies say more than 7,000 civilians
were killed and thousands more wounded in the war's final
weeks.
That has prompted Western calls for an investigation into
potential war crimes and humanitarian law violations.
"We were fired at by both sides," one older woman at the Manik
Farms camp said. She also had a shrapnel wound.
Rajapaksa has dismissed the calls for an investigation and said he
was "not afraid of walking up to any gallows, having defeated the
world's worst terrorists".
The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council is due to meet this week
on Sri Lanka and may want to launch a probe.
The United Nations said this week the civil war had killed between
80,000-100,000 people since it erupted in 1983.
The military said on Friday it had lost 6,200 troops and killed 22,000 Tigers in the nearly three years of the war's final phase.
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