Modi visits Tamil heartland

Narendra Modi visited Jaffna yesterday, making a highly symbolic first trip by an Indian prime minister to Sri Lanka's war-ravaged northern Tamil heartland after urging greater autonomy for the island's largest minority.

The Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka's far north was worst hit by the country's 37-year civil war that killed at least 100,000 people, mostly Tamils, and remains heavily militarised.

Officially, Modi was there to launch construction of a cultural centre funded by India and formally hand over thousands of houses to families made destitute by decades of war.

But his visit was also a demonstration of regional superpower India's support for Sri Lanka's Tamils, who share close cultural and religious ties with those in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

On Friday he held talks with Sri Lanka's new President Maithripala Sirisena and urged the government to fully implement a 1987 constitutional provision giving Tamils greater autonomy in the majority-Sinhalese nation.

India has long supported greater autonomy for the minority group, but Tamil leaders said Modi's comments were particularly strong.

Modi is only the second foreign leader to travel to Jaffna after British Prime Minister David Cameron, who travelled there during a Commonwealth summit in Colombo in November 2013.

Sirisena came to power in January promising ethnic reconciliation and accountability for alleged war crimes committed by security forces under the command of former leader Mahinda Rajapakse.

The United Nations has said it is encouraged by his government's commitment to ethnic reconciliation and accountability for the alleged atrocities committed in the final stages of the war that ended in May 2009.

Hundreds of Tamils are believed to be in custody without trial, while the military still occupies large amounts of land belonging to Tamils.

Modi, who called Sri Lanka a "paradise on earth" during a banquet Sirisena hosted on Friday night, was to return to Delhi yesterday after a two-day visit to the Indian Ocean island.

On Friday he pledged $1.81 billion in financial assistance to Sri Lanka, which had turned to China for economic aid under former strongman Rajapakse's decade-long rule.

Modi has said global confidence in India has been restored and the world's engagement with the country is at a "new level" even as he assured Sri Lanka that steps would be taken to address its concerns over the huge bilateral trade imbalance.

The Indian premier, who has made clear his ambition to reassert India's dominance in its own backyard since taking office less than a year ago, also called for greater security cooperation between Indian Ocean nations.