Sri Lanka asks aid agencies to scale down operations

By Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka has asked aid agencies to scale down operations as the island nation's "challenges are now different" with the end of a 25-year war, the minister of disaster management and human rights said on Thursday.

The move comes amid increasing pressure from the international community to relax restrictions on aid agencies' access to camps which have housed nearly 300,000 internally displaced people from one of Asia's longest modern wars.

"There must be a reduction or scaling down in operations," Mahinda Samarasinghe, minister of disaster management and human rights, told Reuters.

"This is applicable for all international organisations. The challenges now are different. Manning entry and exit points and handling dead bodies, transport of patients, in the post-conflict era are no longer needed."

Samarasinghe said services needed now could be provided by Sri Lankans.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was shutting down some of its offices in the country following the government's directive.

"The ICRC is in the process of reviewing its setup and operational priorities in Sri Lanka," said the ICRC's head of operations for South Asia, Jacques de Maio.

"As a first step, it will close its offices and withdraw its expatriate staff from the Eastern Province while winding down its operations in the area," he said.

"The ICRC will continue its dialogue with the Sri Lankan government on issues of humanitarian concern."

On May 18, the military declared total victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which had fought an all-out civil war since 1983 to create a separate state for minority Tamils in northern and eastern Sri Lanka.

The government order comes as the island nation awaits a $1.9 billion loan from global lender IMF to address its balance of payments crisis and post-war development.