Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse with the Indian PM (File Photo)

COLOMBO: India’s external intelligence agency tried to undermine Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse at polls in January and wanted him defeated, a minister said in an interview published on Monday. Nandana Goonathilake, minister of postal services, said the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s foreign intelligence service, had worked against Rajapakse at the January 26 vote even though the Indian government publicly supported him.

“How the RAW operates and the way that the government of India operates are sometimes very different,” Goonathilake told the Daily Mirror newspaper in an interview. “This is why I said though the Indian government was for President Rajapakse, particular (RAW) officials worked against him,” he added, without elaborating.

Meanwhile, Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao urged Sri Lanka’s leaders to open a new era of stability after the island’s civil war by bringing minority Tamils into mainstream society, officials said on Monday.

Rao, on a visit to Colombo, told President Mahinda Rajapakse that the defeat of Tamil Tiger separatist rebels last year could lead to a lasting solution to decades of ethnic conflict. Sri Lanka had “a historic opportunity to initiate a process of political reconciliation where all communities in Sri Lanka can live in peace and harmony,” Rao said in a statement.

Rajapakse came to power in 2005 promising to address Tamil demands for greater autonomy, but he later ordered the massive military offensive that crushed the Tigers.

Since then, the president has publicly committed himself to reconciliation though he has yet to implement recommendations of an all-party panel he set up to address grievances of the ethnic Tamil minority.

Rao also welcomed Sri Lanka’s moves to grant freedom of movement to tens of thousands of war-displaced Tamil civilians who were held in military-run camps. India, with its large Tamil population in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, shares close cultural and religious links with Sri Lanka.