COLOMBO: Norway’s foreign minister visited Sri Lanka on Thursday in a sign of reviving relations since a peace deal brokered by the Nordic country failed to end a civil war.

Borge Brende’s visit is the first by a Norwegian foreign minister to Sri Lanka since 2005, when Norway was trying to hold together a fragile cease-fire between the Sri Lankan government and the now-defeated separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

Relations soured after the cease-fire collapsed in 2006 and Sri Lanka’s then-government accused Norway of favoring the rebels. Sri Lankan troops crushed the rebels three years later.

With the election defeat last year of Sri Lanka’s hard-line President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the new government has sought to mend relations with Western nations that had criticized Sri Lanka’s human-rights situation during and after the civil war.

Sri Lanka has told the UN human rights council that it would investigate war crimes allegations against government troops and Tamil rebels.