Campaigns end ahead of Sri Lanka's first post-war polls

In this photograph released by the Sri Lankan military on May 18, 2009 shows what the army says are government troops walking near burnt or burning vehicles in the area inside the war zone near the town of Mullaittivu.

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Campaigning for Sri Lanka's first post-war polls ended Thursday, and the government resettled more than 3,000 who people who fled the final offensive against the Tamil Tigers.

Sri Lanka Saturday will hold a vote in Uva province, and two polls in the towns of Jaffna and Vavuniya to elect local councilors.

The latter are the first in 11 years in the towns on the periphery of the area formerly controlled by the separatist Tamil Tigers.

Unlike polls last year in the Eastern Province after the military drove the Tigers out, campaigning for those in Vavuniya and Jaffna has gone on without violence.

Nonetheless, the defense ministry has declined to give foreign media permission yet to travel there to report on them, said Lakshman Hulugalle, director of the state-run Media Center for National Security.

"It is unacceptable that the government should impose such a ban on nothing more than the vaguest security grounds," press rights group Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.

The upcoming elections in the north are the first in the towns since 1998, and are aimed at entrenching civilian administrations there after years of violence caused by the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised to let civilians, who lived in the northern areas the LTTE ran as a defacto state, vote in a future province-wide election, part of his plan to devolve power to the Tamil-majority area.

But roughly 250,000 Tamils displaced by the war are still in military-guarded refugee camps, and Sri Lanka is under pressure from the West, the United Nations and ally India to keep its pledge of resettling 80 percent of them by the end of the year.

The government has said it will do so despite the need to clear tens of thousands of landmines planted across the Indian Ocean island's north.

Wednesday, the government resettled its third batch of people, among them 3,000 who fled the final part of the offensive that ended with the military declaring victory over the Tigers on May 18.

"I'm happy to go back to my own house. I never thought that we would be able to resettle in such a short period," 58-year-old P. Sundaralingam told Reuters in Jaffna.

The Information Department said another 1,000 people were resettled in eastern districts Wednesday.

(Writing by Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Bryson Hull and Sanjeev Miglani)