20 May 2012 Last updated at 08:21 ET

Sri Lanka profile

• Overview
• Facts
• Leaders
• Media
• Timeline
• In pictures

Lying off the southern tip of India, the tropical island of Sri Lanka has attracted visitors for centuries with its natural beauty.

But it has been scarred by a long and bitter civil war arising out of ethnic tensions between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamil minority in the northeast.

After more than 25 years of violence, the conflict appeared to be at an end - at least militarily - in May 2009, when government forces seized the last area controlled by Tamil Tiger rebels.

NATION AT WAR

Army and Tamil separatists fought a long conflict involving air raids, roadside blasts, suicide bombings, land and sea battles

• More than 70,000 killed
• 1983 - Start of war
• 2009 - Government forces re-conquer all rebel-held territory

The island fell under Portuguese and Dutch influence after the 16th century, and Brtain began its conquest in the 1790s.

There was a long-established Tamil minority in the north and east, and Britain also brought in Tamil labourers to work the coffee and tea plantations in the central highlands. This made the island, then called Ceylon, a major tea producer.

The majority Buddhist Sinhalese resented what they saw as British favouritism towards the mainly-Hindu Tamils.

The growth of assertive Sinhala nationalism after independence fanned the flames of ethnic division, and civil war erupted in the 1980s against Tamils pressing for self-rule.

Most of the fighting took place in the north. But the conflict also penetrated the heart of Sri Lankan society, with Tamil Tiger rebels carrying out devastating suicide bombings in the capital Colombo in the 1990s.

The violence killed more than 70,000 people, damaged the economy and harmed tourism in one of South Asia's potentially most prosperous societies.

International concern was raised about the fate of civilians caught up in the conflict zone during the final stages of the war, the confinement of some 250 000 Tamil refugees to camps for months afterwards, and allegations that the government had ordered the execution of captured or surrendering rebels.

A UN report published in 2011 said both sides in the conflict committed war crimes against civilians. The Sri Lankan government rejected the report, describing it as biased.

There have been ongoing talks between the Sri Lankan government and the biggest Tamil party which may lead to constitutional reforms including substantial regional devolution, which the Tamil party wants given that the north and east are largely Tamil-inhabited.