The following is a transcript of an interview between Al Jazeera’s 101 East presenter Teymoor Nabili and Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka broadcast on May 30, 2007

Teymoor Nabili: Mr President, the Tamil Tigers launched their first attack against your government and against the Sri Lankan people only weeks after you came to power. Why do you think it was, that after so long of adhering to the peace plan, they suddenly decided to start attacking again?

The absence of suitable transport is one of the primary reasons for desertions

In recent months Colombo’s military strategy has lost momentum.

Sri Lankan police ordered the owners of 68 lodges in Pettah Police Division in Colombo to immediately expel around 5000 Tamils.

How is Sri Lanka’s violence against Tamils to be stopped?

Ultimately, to be free, to be independent, we must first be self-sufficient, self-reliant.

Amnesty International said the human rights situation in Sri Lanka has ‘deteriorated dramatically’, as it also warned of a 'human rights meltdown' across the world.

The plight of Madeleine McCann and other children who go missing around the world.

A Sri Lankan court has refused to allow the police to perform forensic tests on bullets recovered from eleven victims killed in Allaipiddy on May 13, 2006, citing the time lapse.

The officials had wanted to test fire weapons obtained from the SLN and compare them to the bullets recovered from the victims.

Paramilitaries are openly threatening media workers and civil society activists in the northern peninsula - say reporters.

A 31-year old Norwegian citizen of Tamil origin has been reported missing since March 31, after he was questioned by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Vavuniya.

Sounthararajan Thambirajah, who has lived in Norway since 1993, had gone to Sri Lanka last year to get married but was trapped in Kilinochchi when violence broke out in August 2006.

The Tamileelam Child Protection Board has urgently requested the parents of children under 17 who had joined the LTTE and yet to be released, to contact it, with the intention of identifying and releasing underage LTTE cadres.

In an announcement published on May 8 in Eezhanaatham, the Tamil daily circulated in LTTE controlled areas, the Board said it had been “expeditiously reuniting children born in 1990 and after with their parents,”

Human rights officials dismissed reports in Sri Lankan papers that 200 children had been handed over by Jaffna parents to protect them from being abducted by the Liberation Tigers.

Officials at the Jaffna office of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commissions (SLHRC) called the story in the Daily Mirror newspaper a blatant lie.

Summary of incidents – apart from major clashes – since 7 May