President Mahinda Rajapakse told the Times of India he did not care about damage to the country's image as a result of resisting pressure from the United Nations and Western countries to submit to an enquiry.

"Why should I worry about others?" the president said in an interview in Colombo. "If India and neighbors are good with me, that is enough for me." Rajapakse's government has ignored calls to investigate allegations that thousands of civilians were killed along with surrendering rebels during the final months of the fighting that ended in May last year.

Sri Lanka has refused to cooperate with a panel named by UN chief Ban Ki-moon last week to advise on "accountability issues" during the conflict, which pitted government forces against Tamil Tiger separatists.

Asked about the risk of losing European Union trade concessions worth an estimated $150 million a year because of his resistance to EU pressure, Rajapakse replied: "I am not bothered." "If the EU doesn't want to give it, let them keep it. I don't want it. We have gone and explained what we have done."

Meanwhile, clerics and lay members of a Buddhist nationalist party protested Monday against a United Nations' panel tasked with investigating alleged human rights violations.

The National Heritage Party consisting largely of monks said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's appointment of the three-member panel last week was interfering in Sri Lanka's domestic affairs and helping terrorism.

Dozens of monks, laymen and laywomen marched to the UN office in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo, chanting slogans against the world body.

“The UN has no right, authority or mandate to appoint a committee. It's an interference with Sri Lankan affairs,” party leader Rev. Omalpe Sobitha told the gathering. “The UN is acting as an agent of terrorism.” Sri Lankan military forces last year defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels, ending 25 years of civil war.

According to the UN, more than 7,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the last five months of the war that ended in May 2009. Human rights groups have accused both government forces and the now-vanquished Tamil Tiger rebels of deliberate targeting of civilians.

Ban's committee led by former Indonesian Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman, also the UN's special rights investigator for North Korea, has been asked to advise him on the alleged abuses during the war's final stages.

The Sri Lankan government has already opposed the move as “an unwarranted and unnecessary interference with a sovereign nation.” Buddhist monks here are considered protectors of the nation and wield big influence in the country's social and political affairs.