COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s 23-year-old history of war left the country’s political leaders and its people exhausted but it has also created worries for Lanka’s immediate neighbour, India, especially Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu has clearly been irked by the recent military bombings of Tamil civilians in rebel-controlled areas and also the humanitarian situation in the north-east with thousands of Tamil civilians suffering from shortages of food, after roads linking rebel areas with the rest of the country were closed in August this year.

Since it withdrew its Indian Peacekeeping force from Sri Lanka in 1989 after a bloody two-year war with the LTTE which culminated in a Tiger suicide bomber assassinating Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi, India has steered clear of involvement in its neighbour’s internal conflict.

However, India which outlawed the Tamil Tigers in 1992 after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, have now turned its criticism on the Sri Lankan government.

In a statement mid November, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi declared that the time was ripe for a "rethink" of India’s policy towards Sri Lanka and to seek and an "answer" to the crisis in the country.

Meanwhile, Indian Foreign Secretary Shri Shivshankar Menon who concluded a two-day visit to Sri Lanka on Friday had urged the government to proceed with peaceful negotiations with the Tamil Tiger rebels, the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry sources said. Menon who marked his first visit to Sri Lanka met with President Mahinda Rajapakse, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremenayake and Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera.

Menon’s visit to Sri Lanka come two days ahead of President Mahinda Rajapakse’s scheduled visit to India, his second visit since he assumed duties as president last year. Sources in Colombo meanwhile said that India is reserving a ‘strong and clear’ message to be delivered to President Mahinda Rajapakse during his scheduled five-day visit to New Delhi on Saturday to meet with Indian Premier and other key leaders.

President Rajapakse, accompanied by senior government ministers, will fly into New Delhi on Saturday evening. On Sunday he is scheduled to be in Dehradun - the same place where the Tamil Tigers and other Tamil militants got military training in the 1980s, informed sources said.

Indian Diplomats say that India would be geared to convey to Rajapakse that it does not believe in a military solution to the Tamil ethnic question.

“India is of the opinion that what Sri Lanka needs is a negotiated settlement where the country's Tamils will be protected within a united and federal country. India will never change its stance of supporting Sri Lanka's territorial unity but it also wants the rights of the Tamils protected and this would be the key message that the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh would get across to President Rajapakse”, an official attached to the Indian High Commission in Colombo said.

India somewhat disappointed Rajapakse when he visited New Delhi soon after being elected president last year November, by brushing aside Sri Lanka’s tentative gestures for military support and a previously planned India- Sri Lanka defence pact has been pushed into oblivion.

Defence analysts meanwhile trace the ‘change of heart’ by India in the past one year with regard to the Sri Lankan crisis, to the unexpected power shift in Tamil Nadu.