Colombo - A United Nations human rights envoy was due to arrive in Sri Lanka Wednesday evening amidst growing local and international concern about delays in resettling refugees affected by the country's three-decade-long civil war, officials said. A spokesman for Sri Lanka's Human Rights Ministry said Walter Kalin, the UN secretary general's representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), is to visit government camps where Tamil refugees are housed.
"He has also arranged to meet with the attorney general of Sri Lanka, Mohan Peiris," the spokesman said.
Some 260,000 ethnic Tamils displaced by the final phase of the conflict between the government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which lasted nearly three years, live in the camps which are heavily guarded by the military. Aid workers have complained of poor sanitation facilities and lack of water.
UN agencies have expressed fears that the monsoon rains due next month could have an increase the plight of the camp inmates.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama, battling criticism of the government's resettlement plans, defended the delays in allowing the displaced to return home, the ministry said.
Bogollagama, told his Danish, Indian and Jordanian counterparts on the sidelines of a Climate Change Summit at the United Nations in New York that the large number of landmines in the affected areas was one of the reasons for the delays.
Kalin's visit to Sri Lanka comes less than a week after UN Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs B Lynn Pascoe was in the country on a three-day visit.
The Sri Lankan army declared victory on May 18 after the entire rebel leadership was killed, but the security forces believe that some of the rebels are still hiding among the refugees.
A suspected female rebel committed suicide in Vavuniya town, 254 kilometres north of the capital, on Tuesday when police attempted to arrest her.
