NEW YORK – Sri Lanka’s foreign minister said his government has no case to answer over the reported deaths of thousands of civilians at the end of its civil war, even as pressure grows for an international inquiry to account for the dead.

The U.N.’s top human rights official said last week that Sri Lanka needs to show progress by next March or the international community should establish its own inquiry into allegations of civilian casualties and summary executions in the final months of the quarter-century conflict that ended in 2009, when government forces crushed ethnic Tamil rebels.

On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris on Monday defended the government’s efforts in probing reported abuses by security forces, and said a commission of inquiry appointed by Sri Lanka’s president in August to investigate disappearances would report back after six months.

“Sri Lanka is not stalling,” Peiris said.