New Sri Lankan government accuses former leader Rajapaksa of trying to stage a coup

Sri Lanka's new government has accused toppled strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa of having tried to stage a coup to cling to power after losing last week's presidential election.

Rajapaksa, South Asia's longest-serving leader before losing last Thursday's polls, had been widely praised for conceding defeat to Maithripala Sirisena before the final results had been announced. But a top aide to Sirisena said that 69-year-old Rajapaksa had in fact tried to persuade the island's army and police chiefs to help him stay in office with the use of force.

"People think it was a peaceful transition. It was anything but," Mangala Samaraweera, who is expected to be announced as Sirisena's foreign minister, told a press conference in Colombo.

"The first thing the new cabinet will investigate is the coup and conspiracy by president Rajapaksa. He stepped down only when the army chief and the police Inspector General (N.K. Illangakoon) refused to go along with him," Samaraweera said.

Illangakoon was "very vocal and did not want to be a party to this coup" while army chief Daya Ratnayake also refused to deploy troops for Rajapaksa to seize power, said Samaraweera.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and even Sirisena himself had thanked Rajapaksa for quitting in the early hours of Friday, after his defeat in an election he had seemed certain to win when he called it in November.