<p>The Sri Lankan government has not given the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) any promises that are ‘harmful’ to Sri Lanka in exchange for its support, a United National Party (UNP) minister has said.</p> <p>Minister Arjuna Ranatunga said that even he would not be prepared to work with the government anymore if it paved the way for separatism or ‘ethnic division’, according to Daily News.</p> <p>There was no truth to rumours that the government had promised the TNA it would ‘separate’ the country and the TNA had simply sought the government’s consent on a number of issues affecting people in the North, the minister said.</p>

<p>A new Sri Lankan constitution, the focus of the Tamil National Alliance’s (TNA) efforts since 2015 will still ensure foremost place given to Buddhism, and will feature the Sinhala term for unitary state in all three languages (Sinhala, Tamil and English).</p> <p>The decision to preserve the article which prioritises Buddhism was taken unanimously by the United National Party (UNP), the United National Front (UNF) and Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.</p> <p>TNA leaders have said they are confident that a draft constitution will be presented to parliament by February 4 this year.</p>

<p>Sri Lanka’s former president Mahinda Rajapaksa called on people to “protect our motherland from enemy forces” in a New Year’s message released yesterday.</p> <p>“I wish all Sri Lankans a new year full of new hope and optimism,” he <a href="http://www.dailymirror.lk/article/-Hope-all-Sri-Lankans-will-unite-to-p…">said</a>.</p>

<p>A Sri Lankan minister has admitted that the country’s cricket board has been ranked the world’s most corrupt by the sport’s governing body, after a series of scandals have rocked the administration.</p> <p>The International Cricket Council (ICC) feels "Sri Lanka's cricket administration is corrupt from top to bottom", said sports minister Harin Fernando said, after meeting with officials, including ICC anti-corruption chief Alex Marshall, in Dubai.</p>

<p>Political turmoil in Sri Lanka looks set to continue in the year ahead, warned analysts from consultancy groups this week, with worries that investors may have underestimated the crisis on the island.</p> <p>Sasha Riser-Kositsky, senior analyst at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, told CNBC that the current impasse is “at best an uneasy and fragile truce”.</p>

On this day 13 years ago, five Tamil students were summarily executed by Sri Lanka's Special Task Force, whilst they spent an afternoon on the beach in Trincomalee.

To date no one has been held accountable for the murder.

The case – known as the 'Trinco 5' – remains one of the highest profile killings in Sri Lanka to receive international attention, listed in 2014 by the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' report on the island as one of four ‘emblematic cases’ of the government's failure to ensure accountability and having been raised repeatedly in international forums.

We look back at 2018's top news stories and significant issues through images from throughout the year. 

A US embassy delegation met with the Sri Lankan military in Jaffna earlier this week, in a reported discussion about further training opportunities between the two militaries.

Captain Armando Peralta, director of the Information Support Team from the Pacific Augmentation Team of the US Embassy in Colombo, met with Major General Darshana Hettiarachchi, the head of the Sri Lankan army in Jaffna, at its headquarters in the peninsula last week.

<p>Sri Lanka’s prime minister has pledged to take action against those who vandalised Buddha statues in the Kegalle district earlier this month, according to a report in The Island.</p> <p>Ranil Wickremesinghe reportedly told a group of senior Buddhist monks from the Asigiriya and Malwathu chapters on Friday that his government would take stern action against the "real culprits" who had damaged the Buddha statues in Mawanella last week.</p> <p>During the meeting he also told the monks of how Buddhism would continue to hold the foremost place on the island, despite any change in the constitution.</p>

The Canadian government has issued a travel advisory for tourists heading to Sri Lanka, urging visitors to “exercise a high degree of caution at all times” when on the island and added that Tamil Canadians have faced arrests and detention by security forces.

“The Sri Lankan military continues to maintain a strong presence in the country’s north and east, including the Jaffna Peninsula,” said the official travel advisory this week.