"You must respect our views also, without trying to put us in the corner," he said.
On Saturday, British Prime Minister David Cameron gave Sri Lanka a March deadline for showing progress on postwar reconciliation, after which he said he would press the issue with the United Nations.
"You can't say do it in one week or four months. That's very unfair," Rajapaksa said.
The leaders of Canada and Mauritius boycotted the summit over Sri Lanka's human rights record. India's prime minister sent his foreign minister in his place, with Indian Tamil voters demanding a boycott.
But Cameron and other leaders who defied calls to boycott the summit argued that engaging Sri Lanka was a better plan.
South African President Jacob Zuma, whose country is still working on reconciling its minority white and majority black populations after abolishing apartheid in 1990, said he shared lessons on reconciliation with the Sri Lankan government.
"We have some experience to offer," Zuma said, adding that his country was ready to help further "if there's a need for South Africa to play a role."
Rights groups questioned Sri Lanka's resolve in addressing the rights issues, noting a deterioration in the rule of law in recent years and ongoing media harassment. Since Rajapaksa became president in 2005, more than 80 journalists have fled 26 of them in the last five years.
Leaders who attended described the summit as a success and emphasized the importance of keeping the group of Britain and its former territories together in order to lobby in other international forums as one unit that shares linguistic and judicial colonial residues, while representing a third of the world's population and a fifth of its economy.
"We should not be divided," Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said, adding that the 27 leaders who attended out of 53 Commonwealth nations expressed a "sense of wanting to stay together."
"We can benefit from sitting down and learning from each other," he said.
The Commonwealth leaders produced a final document committing once more to the group's core values, including democracy and human rights, as well as outlining plans to push for changes to international lending that would help small nations access loans and financing for projects to help cope with the effects of climate change.
The next Commonwealth summit will be in Malta in 2015.
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Follow Katy Daigle on Twitter at twitter.com/katydaigle