GALLE, Sri Lanka, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka said on Tuesday it expects $4.5 billion in new international aid over the next three years, as foreign donors warned a renewed civil war was jeopardising the island's economic and development potential. However donors said they had pledged no new aid to Sri Lanka at a two-day development forum as it wrapped up in the historic southern port town of Galle, which comes as the government is beset by calls to stop fighting and resume peace talks with Tamil Tiger rebels. "It is expected that the new development assistance over 2007-2009 will be in the region of $4.5 billion," Minister for Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion Dr. Sarath Amunugama told the conference. "With the existing funding in the pipeline, Sri Lanka's total development assistance will rise to around $9 billion within the next three years," he added. Donors have previously pledged billions of dollars in medium-term development assistance to Sri Lanka and want both sides to stop a new chapter of a two-decade civil war that has killed 4,000 people in the past year alone and displaced another 200,000 civilians in the north and east. Apparently emboldened by the capture of a key eastern rebel stronghold, the government has vowed to wipe out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) military machine -- and analysts expect a war that has killed more than 67,000 people to deepen. The international community is increasingly concerned, and hopes the chorus of donor fears expressed as the conference opened will be heard by the government. "It was definitely not a pledging conference," said one foreign development partner, asking not to be named. "No-one has pledged anything." Donors estimate the conflict has shaved between 2-3 percentage points a year off gross domestic product since the war began in 1983, and say that the president's 10-year plan to lift four million rural Sri Lankans out of poverty depends on peace.
