Sri Lanka vows to resettle Tamils

[Posteritatis]

Source: BBC News

Sri Lanka says it will resettle most of the 280,000 Tamils displaced by the recently ended war within six months. The pledge was made after President Mahinda Rajapaksa met the Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and India's national security adviser.

Their joint statement underlined the urgency of relief and resettlement measures, but also of achieving a "lasting political settlement".

. . .

It said that Colombo also intended to start a broader dialogue with all parties including Tamil ones, "for further enhancement of political arrangements to bring about lasting peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka".

Earlier, the Indian representatives told reporters that President Rajapaksa was willing to go beyond a 1987 devolution plan in order to consolidate peace in the ethnically divided nation, where at least 80,000 people have been killed in three decades of war.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8061623.stm

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I'm edging much further towards "cautiously" than "optimistic" here, but...