Britain quizzes Sri Lanka on meeting aid conditions

COLOMBO, Feb 18 (Reuters) Britain has asked the Sri Lankan government for assurances that it was fulfilling human rights and defence spending conditions to ensure the flow of millions of pounds in aid, the British embassy said today.

The British query comes as both the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels ignore repeated pleas from the international community to halt a new chapter of a two decade civil war that has killed more than 67,000 people since 1983.

Britain agreed in 2005 to provide Sri Lanka 41 million pounds (.9 million) in debt relief through 2015 in yearly instalments of around 4 million pounds, as long as it meets a series of agreed conditions relating to rights, hostilities and defence spending.

''As part of the process leading to the release of the next instalment of debt relief, the British Secretary of State for International Development wrote last week to the Sri Lankan government to seek clarification that these conditions were still being met,'' Britain's High Commission in Colombo said in a statement.

Truce monitors and rights groups have accused both government forces and the Tigers of repeated violations of a now tattered 2002 ceasefire pact, and a team of international experts has been appointed to observe a probe into a series of killings and abuses blamed on both sides.

Britain this week offered to play a bigger role in Sri Lanka's moribund peace process, including talking directly to Tamil Tiger rebels it has labelled as terrorists, as part of efforts to end a war that has killed around 4,000 people in the past year alone.

Apparently emboldened by the capture of a key eastern Tiger stronghold, the government has vowed to wipe out the Tigers' entire military machine, worrying diplomats.

The Tigers resumed their fight for an independent state after President Mahinda Rajapakse flatly rejected their demands for a separate homeland for minority Tamils in the north and east.

Suspected Tigers have mounted a series of ambushes and bomb attacks against the security forces in recent months, the latest today, when four people were killed by a roadside bomb in the besieged, army-held northern Jaffna peninsula.

REUTERS PDM KN1855