President Mahinda Rajapaksa promised on Friday to seek a political solution to address the ethnic conflict in a post-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Sri Lanka, even as a top UN official pressed Colombo to begin process of national reconciliation by accommodating "legitimate" grievances of Tamils.
In a message to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Rajapaksa renewed his promise to work towards a political
solution for addressing the grievances of the country's ethnic Tamil minority who share close ties with India.
Indian envoys, M K Narayanan and Shiv Shankar Menon had yesterday met Rajapaksa and sought political solution of
the conflict after the military defeat of the LTTE.
Ahead of UN chief Ban Ki Moon's visit to Colombo, his top aide Vijay Nambiar said: "The process of national reconciliation, we feel, must be all-inclusive so that it can fully address legitimate aspirations of Tamils as well as other minorities".
Ban, who is scheduled to arrive in Colombo on friday night will discuss the condition of nearly 300,000 ethnic Tamil civilians displaced by the war and ask Colombo to check ethnic divisions, said his chief of staff Nambiar. Later in the day, Rajapaksa dismissed attempts to haul him for international war crime charges and said he was even ready "to go to the gallows" for defeating the Tamil rebels.
He said unnamed foreign elements were trying to sabotage the government's military campaign which ended successfully
earlier