U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca will visit Sri Lanka next week to survey post-tsunami relief and reconstruction efforts, the U.S. Embassy said Friday. During her two-day visit starting Wednesday, Rocca will travel to the island's devastated east to survey U.S.-sponsored relief programs, an embassy statement said. She is to provide tools to carpenters, masons and welders repairing schools destroyed by the tsunami. More than 31,000 Sri Lankans died in the Dec. 26 disaster and nearly 1 million lost their homes.
