COLOMBO - Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse on Tuesday announced the 'complete defeat' of the Tamil Tigers and vowed to press ahead with a 'homegrown political solution' to end the ethnic conflict.

In an address to parliament, Rajapakse said the government now controlled 'every inch' of the island's territory and had rid the island nation of 'terrorism' with the crushing of the rebels on Monday.

The writ of the state now runs across every inch of our territory,' Rajapakse said in the nationally televised address. 'We have completely defeated terrorism.'

He stressed that the defeat of the Tamil Tigers was a victory for the entire nation and should not be seen as a defeat for the minority Tamil community.

His administration believes the island's ethnic conflict needed a political solution, Rajapakse said.

'We are a government that defeated terrorism at a time when others told us that it was not possible,' Rajapakse said. 'We have demonstrated that we can solve our problems and we will come up with a homegrown political solution.'

He said the country would seek international aid to rebuild the island's war-devastated northern and eastern provinces from where Tamil Tigers were ejected by government forces.

'What we need from the international community is not advice, but material help to carry out our reconstruction effort,' he said.

More than 250,000 Tamil civilians who poured out of Sri Lanka's war zone are being held in state-run camps amid international calls to resettle them in their original homes as soon as possible.

The Tigers took up arms in 1972 to fight for an independent homeland called Eelam. More than 70,000 people were killed in the conflict which was officially ended by the government on Monday.