The central bank governor of Sri Lanka, Ajith Nivard Cabraal, recently visited London at a seminal moment in his country's modern history: following last year's defeat of Sri Lanka's ethnic minority separatist group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the country is enjoying peace after some 26 years of civil war.
But the crushing of the LTTE under the popular president Mahinda Rajapaksa, elected to power in 2004 on a mandate to defeat the LTTE, has strained Sri Lanka's relations with Western governments, who have accused Mr Rajapaksa's administration of wartime human rights violations. In January, Mr Rajapaksa won a second term, defeating former army commander general Sarath Fonseka in what proved a tumultuous and brutish election.
