Following his meeting with President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the US official said at a press briefing that he had a very productive series of meetings with the President, External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris, members of civil society, business community and the opposition.

He also said that he urged Tamil expatriates in the US to invest and support development initiatives in Sri Lanka and that they, unlike earlier, showed interest in doing so.

Welcoming the defeat of the LTTE, Blake stated that achieving reconciliation is a key element of peace and one part of achieving reconciliation will be to finish resettling all internally displaced personas as soon as possible.

The Government as of today (July 22) has resettled 36,110 IDPs out of the initial 300,000 who escaped from the LTTE during the battle last year.

"Another key part of reconciliation is to ensure accountability for past wrongs. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had recently told External Affairs Minister G.L Peiris that Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission holds promise and we hope and expect it will fulfill that promise. A last pillar of reconciliation will be to advance democracy and human rights. Minister Peiris affirmed during his visit to Washington that Sri Lanka wants to revive and strengthen its institutions of democracy," Blake said.

"The US will continue to be Sri Lanka's partner in all of these endeavors," he asserted.

The US Assistant Secretary offered to increase training facilities for Sri Lankan officials and others in the United States during his meeting with the President yesterday.