BY S VENKAT NARAYAN Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, April 4: Indian President Pranab Mukherjee has said India has always felt that the end of the conflict in Sri Lanka provides a unique opportunity to pursue lasting political settlement, acceptable to all communities.

Sri Lanka must seize the opportunity for genuine national reconciliation and move ahead, he told Leader of the Opposition in Sri Lankan Parliament Ranil Wickremesinghe during a meeting at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here on Wednesday.

Receiving Wickremesinghe, President Mukherjee said India-Sri Lanka bilateral relationship is based on shared historical, cultural and ethnic ties as well as extensive people-to-people interaction. It has always been close and cordial.

As a neighbour with thousands of years of close ties, India has a natural interest in Sri Lanka. People of India cannot remain untouched by developments in Sri Lanka, Mukherjee pointed out.

Wickremesinghe concluded his two-day visit to the Indian capital and flew back home on Thursday evening.

For several years now, he has been paying private visits to India at least once every year to keep in touch with India's top leaders and also to meet his innumerable friends here.

Apart from paying a courtesy call on President Mukherjee, he also called on External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, and National Security Adviser Shiv Shanker Menon, among others.

Being the world's largest democracy, India maintains the tradition of receiving opposition leaders who visit the country to interact with the leadership here.

Leaders of Opposition from neighbouring countries who visited New Delhi in recent months to interact with the Indian leadership include Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi, Bangladesh's Begum Khaleda Zia, and Maldives Mohamed Nasheed.