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UN patience wears thin in S Lanka UN patience wears thin in S Lanka
(about 8 hours later)
The UN says it cannot continue to indefinitely fund the main refugee camp in Sri Lanka where the government is keeping nearly 300,000 people. The UN says it cannot continue indefinitely to fund the main refugee camp in Sri Lanka where the government is keeping nearly 300,000 people.
The Menik Farm camp holds the Tamils who fled the fighting in the months before the civil war ended in May.The Menik Farm camp holds the Tamils who fled the fighting in the months before the civil war ended in May.
Sri Lankan authorities say they are still screening everyone for possible links with the Tamil Tiger rebels. The UN refugee agency says that about 2,000 Tamil civilians have returned to their villages after being released from the camp.
The UN says the civilians living there should be allowed to leave as soon as possible. They are the first among a batch to leave over the coming days.
Since the war ended in May, the Sri Lankan authorities have refused to let anyone leave this vast camp apart from some young children, elderly people and priests. A ceremony was held in the town of Vavuniya to see off those people whom the government has allowed to leave the Menik Farm camp, destined for their villages in the far north and the east.
They included about 75 students from Jaffna University and many families.
The government says they are part of a group of nearly 10,000 who will return in the coming days.
The numbers are small compared with the 250,000 or so who remain at Menik Farm, unable to leave.
But UN figures suggest they are the largest group so far released from the controversial camp, where the authorities say they are screening people for possible links to the Tamil Tigers.
Most of those freed up to now have been children and the elderly, but there have been some who do not fall into such categories.
The head of the UN in Sri Lanka has meanwhile told the BBC that civilians living in the camp should be allowed to leave as soon as possible.
UN agencies help fund and run the camps but there are signs the UN is running out of patience.UN agencies help fund and run the camps but there are signs the UN is running out of patience.
"The best solution is obviously that as many people leave as soon as possible," the UN's Sri Lanka chief, Neil Buhne, told the BBC."The best solution is obviously that as many people leave as soon as possible," the UN's Sri Lanka chief, Neil Buhne, told the BBC.
"And that the site can become - for the people who have no place else to go - that it becomes an open site.""And that the site can become - for the people who have no place else to go - that it becomes an open site."
'Concerned'
Mr Buhne also criticised the fact that the International Red Cross was being denied access to 10,000 of the Tamils whom the government calls Tiger suspects.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa said this week that it could still take six months or a year to work out how many of the displaced were to be prosecuted.
Separately, a UN spokeswoman in New York said the world body was "extremely concerned" about two of its Sri Lankan staff members arrested in June near the camps and still in detention.
She said there were allegations they had been mistreated at the hands of the authorities, adding that they should be released unless the government had charges to lay against them.