Saudi authorities have agreed to retry a Sri Lankan housemaid sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, her country's deputy foreign minister said Tuesday.

Harsha de Silva told parliament in Colombo the government had secured a fresh trial for the woman after Sri Lankan diplomats visited her in a Saudi jail over the weekend.

Sri Lanka's prime minister on Tuesday rejected a U.N. call for international involvement in an investigation into alleged war crimes.

Ranil Wickremesinghe said talks were under way to establish a credible domestic mechanism to investigate abuses during the decades-long conflict with Tamil separatist rebels that ended in May 2009.

Sri Lanka promised Thursday to punish those found guilty of war crimes but stopped short of supporting an internationally backed probe, a day after a damning U.N. report on abuses committed during the island's conflict.

Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera said the government would work with the international community to ensure accountability and reconciliation following the island's separatist war, which ended in 2009.

The United Nations on Wednesday pointed the finger at Sri Lankan forces over the killing of 17 French charity workers on the island nine years ago, despite repeated denials by the military.

A U.N. war crimes report on Sri Lanka said the 2006 attack against Action Against Hunger (ACF) staff was "the most significant case of humanitarian workers killed" in the country.

Sri Lanka's new unity government is planning a range of measures to ensure reconciliation after decades of war, including creating an office for war reparations and a truth commission, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera said Monday.

"The government of Sri Lanka recognizes fully that the process of reconciliation involves addressing the broad areas of truth seeking, justice, reparations and non-recurrence," Samaraweera told the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena appointed members of a new unity government Friday, a day after parliament endorsed the move as part of efforts to address ethnic reconciliation after decades of war.

President Sirisena gave most portfolios in the 43-minister cabinet to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP), which won the August 17 general elections but fell short of an absolute majority.

A Tamil lawmaker is to lead the opposition in Sri Lanka's parliament for the first time in 32 years, the speaker of the House said Thursday.

Rajavarothiam Sampanthan is the first lawmaker form the ethnic minority to lead the opposition since 1983, when Tamil legislators resigned en masse to protest against a new statute that compelled them to denounce separatism.

The U.S. warned Sri Lanka on Tuesday that reconciliation with ethnic Tamils after the island's separatist war will not be easy, as it praised the new reformist government elected last week.

Two senior U.S. diplomats pledged to work with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's government during a visit to the island in the wake of the August 17 general election.

Sri Lanka's police Monday arrested four army personnel, including two senior officers, in connection with the disappearance of a dissident cartoonist that triggered international condemnation of the island's rights record.

Two lieutenant colonels, a sergeant and a corporal were arrested following the testimony given by three other suspects already in custody over the abduction of Prageeth Eknaligoda in 2010, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said.

Sri Lanka's prime minister-elect Ranil Wickremesinghe is a champion of free enterprise who has managed to win economic and political support from both the West and regional superpower India in his eight months in office.

The 66-year-old was handpicked by President Maithripala Sirisena to lead a minority government after the shock ousting of the country's longtime leader Mahinda Rajapakse in January.