Sri Lanka plans to resettle refugees in six months

Soldiers from the Sri Lankan army celebrate their victory

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 on Thursday after meeting visiting Indian officials.Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and National Security Advisor M.K. 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.