Pakistan’s former High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Basheer Wali Mohammed said in Islamabad last week that he had "convincing evidence" that a powerful regional intelligence agency, rather than the Tamil Tigers, was behind the August 2006 bid to assassinate him in Colombo.

An Indian defence delegation visiting Sri Lanka has offered assistance in the form of "joint air-defence exercises" to face any threats posed by the aerial capability of the Tigers, press reports in Colombo said.

India which has stepped up its military support to the Rajapakse administration in recent months sent a high level delegation to Colombo to review the ongoing bilateral defence cooperation.

The Pakistan Government is considering another US $31 million military assistance to Sri Lanka for its fight against the Tamil Tigers, apart from the US $ 50 million assistance to the Sri Lankan Government to purchase military hardware.

The announcement was made Pakistan Foreign Minister Inam ul Haque when he met a visiting Sri Lanka media delegation in Islamabad.

Sri Lanka last week continued its hostile stand against UN institutions by charging UNESCO of issuing ill-advised statements and summoning and telling off the UNICEF country representative for meeting the LTTE’s political head.

Sri Lanka's militaristic government said last week it had hauled in the envoys of countries calling for UN human rights monitoring of the island's dirty war against the Tamil Tigers, AFP reported.

The ambassadors of the United States, the European Union, France, Korea and Sweden were summoned for a dressing down by foreign ministry secretary Palitha Kohona, AFP quoted the ministry as saying.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) officials currently touring the United States lobbying for a UN mission to monitor human rights violations in Sri Lanka, told the Chicago Public Radio that their current focus is on the "shocking" disappearances and killing in Sri Lanka where the Sri Lanka Government has done "shamefully little" to investigate the cases.

While the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Britainb, Ms. Kshenuka Senewiratne, toils hard to extricate the Government of Sri Lanka from the diplomatic bungle it made in issuing a diplomatic passport under false name to fugitive Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna, human rights organizations accused Karuna of "war crimes," and urged British Government to try him in Britain.

The fear that gripped the Tamil community in Colombo had only just begun to wane after a decline in the number of abductions when the indiscriminate arrests of over 2000 Tamils following the twin bombs in the city and a suburb, shook them to the core.

The cordon and search operations carried out last week in the city and the suburbs came as a surprise not only to the Tamils, but to people of other ethnicities as well.

Vanni medical staff stage protest against attack on ambulances.

In the year 1998, Joubert Gnanamuttu an engineer by profession (a slightly built, soft spoken and self effacing gentleman who had lived for more than twenty nine years in Colombo and who spoke with a slight stammer), was travelling in the bus to Borella when it was stopped at an Army check-point at Stanley Wijesundera Mawatha.

The British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Dominick Chilcott, said Monday that President Mahinda Rajapakse must make an offer acceptable to moderate Tamils because the LTTE would not accept a negotiated solution within a united Sri Lanka.

Mr. Chilcott accepted, however, that the President had to be able to “sell the solution” to the majority Sinhalese. The international community has no plans to intervene in Sri Lanka to exercise the responsibility to protect, he further said.

An inside look at the northern peninsula - from outside.

Japan's Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said on Monday Tokyo would continue to offer economic assistance to Sri Lanka despite the suspension of some U.S. and British aid this year over human rights abuses in the continuing civil war.

Japan is the single largest donor to Sri Lanka, and provides nearly two thirds of all international aid to the island. It has contributed 63 percent of total bilateral
aid received by the country since 2003.