Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa today assured the international community that he was determined to hold provincial elections in the former LTTE controlled North at an ‘earliest appropriate time’.Addressing the diplomatic Corps in Colombo today , the President said ‘My Government is determined to hold Provincial Council Elections in the North, at the earliest appropriate time. We believe that both through the recently completed Parliamentary Election and the forthcoming Provincial Council Election, there will emerge a leadership sensitive to the specific needs of those areas and to the national aspirations for peace and progress.Rajapaksa asserted that even while battling the LTTE rebels, the Island government acted in a manner to fully protect the democratic rights of the people. ‘We held Provincial Council Elections in the East in May 2008, no sooner than the LTTE were cleared from that area. While the battle against terrorists was on, we held Elections in all Provinces and strengthened the democratic institutions of the country’, he said.The General Election has shown that they are moving away in large measure from political parties representing single communities or groups, and towards mainstream political parties, Rajapaksa observed.He said of the 2.67 lakh rendered internally displaced when the conflict situation ended due to their having been used as human shields by the LTTE, almost 70% have now been able to leave the transit welfare villages.’Similarly, my Government has also been mindful of the need to heal the wounds caused to national amity by the conflict situation’, the President saidHe said the government would shortly appoint a Commission on Post- Conflict Study and Reconciliation and that the preliminary work in this regard is now being concluded.