WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka said on Friday it has asked the United States to extend a crackdown on the Tamil Tigers to overseas groups that help raise funds for the separatist rebels.

Washington has branded the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a terrorist group since 1997.

Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said Sri Lanka had sought "greater vigilance and greater action by the United States law enforcement authorities in terms of the ones who are responsible for collection of funds for the LTTE."

U.S. authorities in Boston and Baltimore had helped halt fund-raising by LTTE "front groups" who funneled cash to rebels fighting the government under guise of charities, he said at the end of a three-day U.S. visit.

Bogollagama, who met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley, as well as U.S. lawmakers, did not elaborate on the actions taken by the United States.

But he said that Sri Lanka had frozen accounts of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, which he described as the LTTE's primary fund-raising arm in the United States.

State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck said Rice and Bogollagama discussed human rights and humanitarian issues in the Indian Ocean island state, where dozens have died in the latest fighting in a civil war that has killed around 68,000 people since 1983.

"We support the Sri Lankan government's efforts to seek a political settlement to the conflict that will satisfy the aspirations of all Sri Lankans," Beck said in a statement.

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