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The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, has sent his chief of staff Vijay Nambiar, to Colombo to try to resolve the crisis. India and human rights groups have asked Sri Lanka to extend a recent pause in the fighting to allow the civilians to leave for secure areas. “An urgent humanitarian pause must be implemented immediately,” Amnesty International said in a statement

               Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian N Srikantha stressed that they were invited by the Indian Foreign Secretary, Shivshankar Menon, for talks in Delhi on 15-16 April. “We resolved that we should not respond positively to this invitation now given the fact that India has not taken any meaningful attempt diplomatically or politically to bring about a ceasefire,” he said. Only ten TNA MPs out of 22 have taken part in the discussion on Thursday, and TNA leader R Sambanthan is currently in India.

'No links with LTTEMr. Srikantha said his party has no direct links with the Tamil Tigers.The TNA cannot “brush aside” reports that LTTE is keeping civilians in the battle field as a human shield but the LTTE is trying their best to protect themselves, he said. “But the fact remains that the people numbering more than 50,000 who have already crossed over to government controlled area are practically detained,” he said. The Sri Lanka government reject the accusation by the human rights groups that civilians fleeing the LTTE controlled territory are detained in camps similar to “concentration camps”. The MP also denied reports that TNA rejected an earlier invitation for talks by Sri Lanka President, Mahinda Rajapaksa.“We never rejected President Rajapaksa’s invitation. We responded stating the reason why we are unable to meet face to face with him. Our demand is this –have a ceasefire, and then we can play our role,” MP Srikantha said.