Govt expects credible evidence from Allan Rock - Defence Spokesman

Ranil Wijayapala

COLOMBO: Government Defence Affairs Spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said yesterday that the Government was expecting credible evidence from Allan Rock to prove his allegations against the Security Forces before moving on to the next course of action on his statement.

The Minister said Rock has clearly mentioned that he made the statement against the Security Forces based on credible evidence he had gathered and as a sovereign State the Government has the right to ask him for such evidence to prove his allegations.

"We are waiting till he provides us with such credible evidence. So far he has not provided us with credible evidence," the Minister added.

The Minister assured that Government was ready to raise the issue at diplomatic level once Rock provides credible evidence to prove that Security Forces participated in child recruitment in the East.

"We vehemently condemn and totally reject the allegation made by Rock," he said.

The Minister said he would come out with the next course of action on Rock's statement.

The Minister said Rock was the former Canadian Health Minister who attended the Tamil Cultural festival disregarding a Canadian Intelligence warning that the show has been organised to raise funds for the LTTE.

Minister Rambukwella said the Government is also concerned about the statements issued by Acting Spokeswoman of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission Helen Olaffsdottir.

"She has repeatedly given biased statements going beyond the mandate given to her when commenting on incidents," the Minister said.

The Minister said the Government has recorded its protest against her once when she made such a biased statement when Ulf Henrickson was the SLMM Chief.

"The only mandate given is to state whether any party had violated the ceasefire agreement or not but not to act a teledrama for the media regarding such incidents," the Minister said, referring to the way in which Olaffsdottir commented on the incident in Vavuniya recently.