Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has apologized for the ethnic riots which sparked the country's two decades of ethnic war in July 1983, the official Daily News said on Saturday.

Addressing a ceremony held in Colombo on Friday to hand over compensation to 30 out of 937 victims of ethnic violence more than 20 years ago, President Kumaratunga said that Sri Lanka could not survive from the bitter past as they were not ready to accept that they had done a mistake.

"As a nation we cannot deny that we had done a mistake in 1983. We have to accept that," she said.

"It is the responsibility of the government to apologize for the mistake that had happened in 1983." she added.

Kumaratunga said that the state which perpetrated that crime against Tamils should make a public apology for their mistake and the other side (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) who orchestrated suicide bombing and all sorts of violence should also apologize for what they had done.

To mark the 21st anniversary of the widespread ethnic riot between the country's dominant Sinhalese and minority Tamils which took place in July 1983, the government has decided to allocate a sum of 72.3 million rupees (about 708,800 US dollars) to pay as compensation to a total of 937 identified victims of ethnic violence.

The government and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) rebels entered a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire in February 2002 and both sides started direct peace talks seven months later.

However, the LTTE rebels pulled out of the talks in April last year after six rounds had been held.

All efforts to revive the stalled peace talks have so far failed.

More than 64,000 people have been killed in the past two decades of ethnic war between government troops and the LTTE rebels who wanted the setting up of an independent Tamil state in the country' s north and east.