By Shihar Aneez and C. Bryson Hull

COLOMBO, May 28 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka on Thursday said a vote at the U.N. Human Rights Council had vindicated its prosecution of the war against the Tamil Tigers, and dealt a blow to Western calls for a probe into possible rights violations.

The military also said it had positively matched the DNA of the bodies of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) founder Vellupillai Prabhakaran and his son Charles Anthony, both killed last week in the final battle of Sri Lanka's 25-year war.

Sri Lanka had faced what it viewed as a hostile session of the U.N.'s right council on Tuesday and Wednesday in Geneva, but took charge of it by introducing its own resolution praising its defeat of the Tigers and winning its passage.

Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said the original resolution had been backed by nations "who were trying to undermine Sri Lanka's efforts in countering terrorism".

"The earlier resolution had various adverse ingredients, much to the detriment of Sri Lanka's profile, its reputation, and in terms of its future agenda, including an investigative element they brought in. We were able to defeat that," he told reporters.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillay, said that while the Human Rights Council did not launch an inquiry in its two-day session, "we still think that it would be the best route to follow".

"That inquiry could still happen further down the line," he told Reuters in Geneva, where the council's two-day special session took place. "I don't think the council session necessarily terminates anything."

DNA MATCHED

Human rights groups had hoped the U.N. forum would launch an inquiry into abuses by both sides.

Pillay has said the LTTE recruited child soldiers and used civilians as human shields, while the military had indiscriminately shelled areas packed with civilians. Both sides denied the allegations.

Sri Lanka has bristled at the accusations, and called the Western-led push for a rights and war crimes probe a hypocritical violation of its sovereign right to destroy a group listed by more than 30 countries as a terrorist organisation.

The United Nations estimates that between 80,000 and 100,000 people died in what was one of Asia's longest modern wars, erupting in earnest in 1983 when the Tigers began to fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils.

Sri Lanka declared the war over and the Tigers crushed on May 18, and more crucially, produced the body of Prabhakaran.

His death was seen as a decisive blow, given the cult-like following he was able to command for three decades in a conflict where the Tigers proved the efficacy of suicide bombings as an instrument of war.

"The Army Medical Directorate conducted the DNA test with the assistance of the Ministry of Health and it was confirmed the DNA samples of Prabhakaran and Charles Anthony were matching," military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Nanayakkara also said Prabhakaran's parents had been identified as being among the nearly 300,000 people who are now in refugee camps after fleeing the end of the war.

Rights groups have criticised them as inadequate and overcrowded, and the United Nations has urged the government to give aid agencies full access. Sri Lanka says it will do so but has to weed out LTTE infiltrators first. (Additional reporting by Laura MacInnis in Geneva; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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