Sri Lanka says it has resettled almost half of the country's 280,000 displaced civilians trapped in refugee camps, since it won its fight against the Tamil Tiger rebels.

However, Mahinda Samarasinghe, the Minister of Human Rights and Disaster Management told reporters on Friday that 143,161 internally displaced civilians still remain in refugee camps.

The camps are under tight security since the end of the three-decade-long conflict in May, he said, and added that the government has kept civilians in their camps to be screened before they are released.

The concern is that the Tamil Tiger rebels might be hiding among the refugees. The civilian areas must be cleared of more than a million mines and infrastructure restored before people can return to their homes, the minister stressed.

He promised all refugees would be returned by January 2010.

Meanwhile, John Holmes, the United Nations Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, praised Sri Lanka's progress.

He was visiting the island nation to assess the resettlement and release of the displaced people, who had fled from the fighting in the last months of the war.

FTP/SS/MMA