COLOMBO, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan government on Monday announced its plans to hold local council elections in the island's troubled Eastern Province.

    "Today I have issued the gazette notification which will allow the Commissioner of Elections to hold elections for nine local councils in the Eastern Province," Janaka Bandara Tennakoon, the minister of Local Government told Xinhua.

    He said nominations for the local administrative units will be accepted between Jan. 14 and Jan. 21, 2008 while Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake would decide on the elections date later.

    The government in mid-July this year claimed that the entire Eastern Province had been cleared of Tamil Tiger rebels through a series of military offensives which began in July 2006.

    Tennakoon said the government's next target was to hold provincial council elections to appoint a Provincial Council for the East.

    The government has de-merged the Northern and Eastern provinces as a result of a Supreme Court order issued in October 2006.

    Until the court order, the two provinces had remained as a single province in terms of the India-Sri Lanka peace accord signed in July 1987.

    The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has been fighting more than two decades to set up a separate homeland for the minority Tamils in a merged Northern and Eastern provinces.