Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and National Security Advisor M.K.Narayanan 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 May 18 it had totally defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), ending a war long viewed as unwinnable.

During the relentless offen- sive, 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 gov- ernment 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 saidthe 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 tothe 60 million Tamils who live inthe south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and it has had to walk a delicate line in supporting the military campaign. India committed to provide assistance fordemining, civil infrastructure and reconstruction of houses, the statement said.

Sri Lanka also committed tobegin implementing devolutionof political power to Tamils aslaid out in the 22-year-old Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, which India brokered four years after the first phase of the civil war erupted in 1983.

"The government of Sri Lanka also intends to begin a broader dialogue with all parties including Tamil parties in the new circumstances, for further enhancement of political arrangements to bring about lasting peace and reconciliation," the statement said.

Rajapaksa offered compromise and reconciliation to Tamils in his victory speech on May 19, in which he said the defeat of the LTTE should not be construed as a defeat of Tamils, and again on Thursday.

In a statement on May 21, he said: "Ensuring that the nation's outpouring of joy at the defeat of terrorism leaves no room for anyone's feelings to be hurt in any manner is the great-est tribute we can pay to ourmotherland." "Let us all stand together, strong and united in victory.

"The LTTE formed in the1970s as Tamils turned to guerrilla violence to fight discrimination meted out by governments led by the Sinhalese majority, and the Tigers eventually took total control by violently wiping out competing groups.

Tamils lost their favored status under the British colonial government when it handed power over to the Sinhalese majority at independence in1948.