UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday requested the Sri Lankan government to provide international relief agencies with "unhindered access" to the refugee camps housing hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced in the recent military offensive against the Tamil Tiger rebels in the country's northeastern regions.
After talks with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse at his residence in Kandy, Ban acknowledged that the Sri Lankan government was trying its level best to provide assistance to those displaced in the recent military offensive, but warned that it was not enough.
"The government is doing its utmost best", but added that there was a "wide gap between what is needed and what can be done".
His request for greater international access to the refugee camps follows earlier complaints by several international aid agencies that the Sri Lankan government has restricted their access to the camps for the displaced.
Ban also stressed on the importance of taking immediate steps for promoting political reconciliation between the majority Sinhalese and Tamils, warning that any failure in this regard by the Sri Lankan government could lead to history repeating itself.
The UN chief, who arrived in Sri Lanka on a 24-hour trip on Saturday to discuss the plight of some 275,000 internally displaced people, visited the Manik Farm area in Vavuniya where most of the displaced are being accommodated and took a low-level helicopter flight over the coastal area where the final battle was fought.
His remarks on Saturday came just days after President Rajapaksa assured visiting Indian National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon that his government has charted out plans for the resettlement of the 280,000 war-displaced Tamils within the next six months.
"We will try to work hard to keep that promise realized," Ban said Friday. "They need to be resettled as soon as possible."
Ban's Sri Lankan visit comes four days after President Rajapaksa declared victory in the country's 25-year civil war against the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Shortly after the President's victory declaration on Tuesday, the military announced that it had recovered the body of Tamil Tiger founder and leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Military officials said that the Tamil Tiger leader was killed while trying to escape from the war zone.
Fighting between the Tamil Tiger rebels and the government forces intensified in 2006 after the Sri Lankan government backed out of a 2002 Norwegian-brokered ceasefire in January and launched an all out offensive against the rebels, aiming to crush them by the end of 2008.
It is estimated that more than 80,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the country's civil war after the Tamil Tiger rebels launched an armed rebellion in 1983, demanding an independent state for the Tamil minority in the island nation's northern and eastern regions.
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