Sri Lanka's president has promised the United Nations that nearly 300,000 war-displaced ethnic Tamils held in military-run camps will be resettled in the next four months, The Associated Press reported. President Mahinda Rajapaksa made the pledge in a meeting Friday with the U.N.'s undersecretary-general for political affairs. A statement from the president's office says he told the U.N. official, B. Lynn Pascoe, that he expects new demining equipment will allow all of the Tamil civilians to be resettled by the end of January. Sri Lanka has said it can't send the displaced people home until their villages are cleared of mines. About 280,000 ethnic Tamil civilians have been held in the camps since the island nation's civil war ended four months ago.
