Colombo: Sri Lanka has rejected UN rights chief Navi Pillay’s call for an international probe if it fails to show clear progress by next March in probing alleged war crimes during the three-decade long conflict with LTTE. Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ravinatha Aryasinghe, said yesterday that Pillay has “no mandate to make such a claim”.
He insisted that his government had put in place “multiple mechanisms to address accountability.” “Sri Lanka needs to be encouraged and not impeded,” Aryasinghe said.
Pillay on Wednesday called on Colombo to use the time left before she delivers a widely-anticipated report on the country to the UN Human Rights Council next March “to engage in a credible national process with tangible results, including the successful prosecution of individual perpetrators.” In March 2012 and March 2013, the UN’s highest human rights body adopted resolutions calling on Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of widespread violations committed during the final months of a Tamil separatist war that ended in 2009. (PTI)