Guidelines for a structured amnesty to former Tamil Tiger rebels and their sympathizers are being drawn up by the government's legal departments, but only lower level rebels will be included in the scheme, a local English newspaper reported on Sunday.

The reprieve would apply to only lower level Tamil Tigers because the leadership and middle rung cadres have died in the war, the Sunday Times quoted government officials close to the process as saying.

"If any senior Tiger was to be arrested, he would be tried in the country's criminal courts," the newspaper said.

An government official close to the process said the "mood in Sri Lanka is that of reconciliation. There is no point in trying people with little evidence of wrong doing."

Human rights watchers estimate that close to 10,000 post-war detainees with suspected links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are being held at government safe houses even as screening of war-displaced persons continues in camps in the northern Vavuniya district.

The newspaper said a section of the government is advocating the post-apartheid South African model of integration for Sri Lanka's deeply-polarized society.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse announced last month that the LTTE had been totally defeated with all the 15,000-sq-km territory formerly held by the rebels being recaptured by the government troops.

About 300,000 Tamil civilians displaced by the final battles between the government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels are now being hosted in scores of camps in the northern Vavuniya and Jaffna districts.

Claiming discrimination at the hands of the majority Sinhalese dominated governments, the LTTE began to fight for an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east in the 1980s, resulting in the killing of about 100,000 people.

Source:Xinhua