COLOMBO: A host of international figures, including a US war crimes investigator, landed in Sri Lanka on Tuesday for visits expected to focus on alleged atrocities committed during the country’s civil war. As the separate US, Japanese and United Nations officials arrived in Colombo, the government furiously denied that any war crimes were committed during the final months of fighting last year. The US embassy in Colombo said the two advisors had been sent by President Barack Obama to discuss issues including the military offensive that ended the decades-long war with separatist Tamil rebels in May 2009. Samantha Power, special assistant to the president on multilateral affairs and human rights, and David Pressman, national security council director for war crimes and atrocities, will hold four days of meetings in Sri Lanka. The embassy said the visit followed last month’s meeting in Washington between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G L Peiris. The US has been pressing for an independent war crimes investigation into the final phase of fighting that ended with the Tamil Tigers’ defeat. Sri Lanka this week is also hosting two other international envoys to discuss peace and reconciliation and alleged human rights abuses during the war. UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s top political adviser, Lynn Pascoe, and Japan’s special envoy to Sri Lanka, Yasushi Akashi, were due on Tuesday for talks with Sri Lankan officials. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse said those making war crimes allegations had failed to prove their claims. “I challenge them to produce evidence,” he told the Sinhalese-language Lankadeepa newspaper. “There is no point in giving photographs and videos to the media. We have an established legal system. Use it.” Sri Lanka has denied any civilians were killed during the final offensive against the rebels last year, although the United Nations reported that at least 7,000 Tamil civilians perished in 2009. Both Pascoe and Akashi are expected to push Sri Lanka to improve ethnic reconciliation a year after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas, who were fighting for a Tamil homeland. Ban is due to appoint a panel on Sri Lanka following widespread allegations that both sides in the war were responsible for crimes against humanity. The top Sri Lankan army commander at the time, General Sarath Fonseka, has denied any wrongdoing, but has agreed to testify before any war crimes tribunal. Fonseka fell out with the government and quit in November before unsuccessfully challenging President Mahinda Rajapakse’s re-election at January polls.