News: hearings

What really happened in the closing stages of Sri Lanka's civil war? There's been a chorus of international demands that the final months - January to May last year - be the subject of an international investigation, with allegations that both the government and the Tamil Tigers committed war crimes causing the deaths of thousands of civilians. But the island's victorious government has defiantly rejected such calls and has instead launched its own inquiry into the last years of the war which it says will establish important facts, promote reconciliation and prevent future wars. Some of its witnesses have testified in private, but our correspondent in Sri Lanka Charles Haviland has been attending its public hearings.