External Affairs Minister meets UNSG:

Commission should be allowed to function without external pressures

The Commission of Inquiry appointed by the Government to address accountability and other aspects has wide powers and comprises eminent persons with adequate resources to perform their task. Therefore there is no reason to cast any doubt about the Commission’s ability to discharge its mandate adequately, External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris said.

The Minister made these remarks when he met UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and other senior officials in New York Monday.

During the talks the Minister also emphasized that the Commission should be allowed sufficient space to perform its functions without being pressured unnecessarily by external elements. External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris met United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and a range of senior UN officials Monday, including Chef de Cabinet, Vijay Nambiar and under Secretary General Lynn Pascoe in New York.

He was also interviewed by Reuters, the BBC, the Wall Street Journal and the Press Trust of India. He noted that other governments, including the US had welcomed the appointment of the Commission as similar mechanisms had been found useful in other post conflict situations. He further noted that the ground situation has changed substantially in the last few weeks making any outside intervention utterly or the appointment of an extraneous panel unnecessary.

He said, Sri Lanka has a rich judicial history going back centuries and it could be expected that the Commissioners would conduct their investigations in conformity with the highest judicial standards.

The proposal to conduct international investigations or even to appoint panels would duplicate the work of the Commission and would give rise to a negative political reaction within Sri Lanka.

A substantial proportion of almost 300,000 persons who had been displaced is now substantially back in their own homes, over 8,000 adult combatants will be treated as victims, rehabilitated and returned to their homes, child combatants are essentially being returned to their own families, extensive development work has been carried out in the North and the East to ensure that the people of these areas who were treated as a human shield by the LTTE and herded into a small combat zones by the terrorists will be able to resume their normal lives and become economically active again.

The Minister will proceed to Washington for additional meetings with the US authorities, including with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Minister was accompanied at these meetings by Ambassador Dr. Palitha Kohona, Deputy Permanent Representative, Bandula Jayasekera and Counsellor Maxwell Keegel