Sri Lanka ? Sri Lanka’s president has reached out to the Tamil minority, calling for political compromise to unify this island nation after the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebel group and the death of its leader.

But broad distrust between ethnic communities following a quarter century of warfare could make it difficult for President Mahinda Rajapaksa to accomplish that goal.

A day after the rebels were defeated on the battlefields of the north, state television on Tuesday broadcast footage of rebel chief Velupillai Prabhakaran’s bloated body — still dressed in dark green camouflage — laid out on a stretcher next to a lagoon. A blue cloth rested on his head, apparently to cover a bullet wound. His open eyes stared blankly.

The footage was meant to refute rebel claims that their supreme leader had somehow survived the bloody final battle that killed 350 rebels and gave the government control of the entire country for the first time in decades.