Sri Lankan defence secretary Gothabaya Rajapakse has told a conference on reconciliation in Colombo that the number of civilians killed during the final phase of the military conflict was far too small to be classed as war crimes or genocide.
The brother of the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse, also revealed that the government was in the final stages of completing a census on the number of killed during the war.
"As a result of the census, we already know that the real number of the dead and missing is far too small to provide any substance to absurd allegations of genocide and war crimes that have been made," he said.
He claimed the number of people missing, which according to TNA MP Suresh Premachandran is nearly 140,000, was due to various reasons, including refugees leaving the country illegally and civilians dying of ‘natural causes’.
Gothabaya conceded civilians may have died at the hands of Sri Lankan security forces, but blamed it on new soldiers who were not able to withstand the pressure of the war.
"It needs to be understood during the 3½ years of humanitarian operation, the Sri Lankan military had to be expanded at a rapid pace.
"In the circumstances, it is possible that a few individuals who lack the capacity to withstand the pressures of the warfare with the required composure may have been recruited," he said.
Mr Premachandran told the BBC that more than 40,000 civilians had been killed by Sri Lankan forces and any census of the casualties should be conducted by international organisation, not by what he termed as ‘the offenders’.
The International Crisis Group’s Alan Keenan said Sri Lanka’s latest move was an ‘attempt to short-circuit’ demands for an international investigation.
"No government accused by so many credible witnesses of such grave crimes can be relied on to count the number of their own victims," he said.
"The process by which the supposed count has happened is not at all clear, but the conditions under which the census would have been conducted in the north — an area under effective military occupation by a victorious army accused of the crimes in question — are not conducive to a fair and accurate count," Keenan said.