Britain calls for urgent ceasefire in Sri Lanka

Colombo  has called for an urgent ceasefire in Sri Lanka to enable the country to find a negotiated political solution to the ethnic conflict.

"A new ceasefire must be constructed as quickly as possible if we are to make progress," Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells told the British parliament on Thursday.

"The end of the ceasefire agreement is confirmation that we have entered a dangerous new phase in Sri Lanka," Howells told the House of Commons at the end of a debate on the developing situation in Sri Lanka.

He described the conflict in Sri Lanka as "appalling" and regretted Colombo's unilateral abrogation of the six-year-old "internationally-backed" and Norway-brokered truce pact January 3.

"The ceasefire agreement was not perfect but (it was) a basis for peace and moving forward," he said, according to the text of the speech released by the British High Commission in Colombo on Friday.

Howells admitted that at the present moment, there was "little substance around which to base negotiations" but he stressed that the international community "must clearly continue to stay engaged, stop the violence and help the Sri Lankan government build a credible environment for a sustainable peace process".