Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Sri Lanka rejected a U.S. report on alleged shelling of civilians during the final battle with Tamil Tiger rebels in May as the State Department called on the government in Colombo to investigate human rights abuses.

“There is a track record of vested interests endeavoring to bring the government of Sri Lanka into disrepute through fabricated allegations and concocted stories,” the Foreign Ministry said on the government’s Web site.

The State Department released a congressionally mandated report yesterday listing accounts of shelling of civilians and killings carried out by the army and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The contents appear to be “unsubstantiated and devoid of corroborative evidence,” the Foreign Ministry said in the capital, Colombo.

Sri Lanka’s army defeated the last LTTE forces in a battle on the northeastern coast in May, ending the group’s 26-year fight for a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east of the South Asian island. The U.S. and United Nations are leading international calls for President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government to release more than 280,000 people, who are mainly Tamils, displaced by the fighting and still held in transit camps.

Those with vested interests want to “fan the flames of secessionism” and undermine the government’s rehabilitation and reconciliation efforts, the ministry said. Rajapaksa has called on the international community to stop criticizing Sri Lanka over human rights and the treatment of displaced people and help the country rebuild after the war.

List of Incidents

The State Department’s 73-page account amounts to a log of incidents carried out by the army and the LTTE from January to May. The report doesn’t reach any conclusions on whether the incidents constituted violations of international law.

“We wanted to lay out all of these credible allegations of human rights violations,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington yesterday. “The report doesn’t attempt to verify all the claims, but we believe that the claims, which are based mostly on reporting” by the U.S. Embassy, international organizations and the media, “are credible,” he added.

The report cited one estimate that 6,710 civilians and LTTE fighters were killed between Jan. 20 and April 20 this year and acknowledged that a significant number of additional deaths may not have been recorded.

During the final weeks of the conflict, senior Sri Lankan government officials repeatedly denied that the army was shelling a civilian safe zone. “However, sources alleged that the majority of shelling” in the no-fire zone was from Sri Lankan forces, the State Department said in the report.

“Reports also indicated that the LTTE forcibly prevented the escape” of internally displaced people and “used them as human shields,” it added.

Open Area

Kelly called on Sri Lanka to open up the area where the incidents took place to international organizations so they can better investigate what happened.

“The report eliminates any reasonable doubt that serious violations of the laws of war were committed by both the LTTE rebels and Sri Lankan government forces,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, who wrote the requirement for the report in legislation.

“If Sri Lanka is to build real peace based on reconciliation and justice, a full and independent investigation is needed, and those responsible must be held accountable,” Leahy said in an e-mailed statement.

Rights Group

New York-based Human Rights Watch yesterday called for an independent international investigation.

“There’s never been an official and comprehensive assessment of abuses by both sides from a government, and that gives the report much more credibility,” Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said in a telephone interview.

Sri Lanka’s government said the delay in releasing civilians from camps is because of the need to ensure security in the north and clear mines from former conflict zones.

Human Rights Watch earlier this week said the government is failing to meet its promise to resettle 80 percent of displaced people by December.

Sri Lanka last month rejected an assertion by UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay that the Tamils are detained under “conditions of internment.”

The government yesterday began resettling people in areas that were controlled by the LTTE, including in Kilinochchi, where the Tamil Tigers had their main base. The program aims to resettle more than 41,000 in Vavuniya district and more than 6,600 in Mannar, the government said.

Sri Lanka is still threatened by separatist forces, Rajapaksa said in a speech on Oct. 19. The government’s war on terrorism was based on achieving an “undivided country, a national consensus and an honorable peace,” he said.

Tamils make up almost 12 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 20 million people. Sinhalese account for 74 percent, according to a 2001 census.

To contact the reporters on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net; Janine Zacharia in Washington at jzacharia@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 22, 2009 21:46 EDT