Security Change

July 08, 2010 (LBO) - Sri Lanka is rapidly removing military checkpoints and transferring public security to the police to return the country to normalcy after the end of a 30-year war, defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said. He said in the eastern province the change-over was being successfully carried out. "In Colombo we are gradually removing check points and road blocks," Rajapaksa told an investment forum in Colombo organized by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce Wednesday.

"We want to guarantee security and improve law and order. An indirect effect of years of terrorism is that there have been law and order issues.

"There has been free availability of weapons and free availability of trained people. Now we want to go after those ones and bring good control of the law and order situation.

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He said the country's police force was also trained mostly in anti-terrorism activities as a result of being in a conflict for decades. But now police are being re-trained starting from senior levels to rapidly take over all public security aspects.

"Not only in the other parts of Sri Lanka even in the north and the east," Rajapaksa said.

"Unfortunately we have an example in the Jaffna peninsula.

"We removed