‘Lanka not making decisions to make other countries
happy’:
People will decide what’s best for SL -Secy. External Affairs Min.
Waruna PADMASIRI
“Sri Lanka is not going to make decisions to make NGOs and other
countries happy; what is best for our country and our people will be
decided by the people of Sri Lanka” Secretary, Ministry of External
Affairs, Karunathilaka Amunugama told Daily News. He said that President
Mahinda Rajapaksa has made this clear on many occassions in the past.
Referring to criticisms by Western countries, INGOs and the Tamil
National Alliance that the LLRC does not adequately address
accountability issues, Amunugama said most of these agencies and
countries had drafted their statements even before the LLRC report was
published. “We know that we can’t make them happy no matter what we do.
We can’t help that,” he said.
Amunugama agreeing with a statement made by Ravinatha Ariyasinha, Sri
Lankan ambassador to the European Parliament recently, said, that those
who claim that the LLRC report does not address accountability issues
really mean that the report has not come to the conclusions they wish
for.
There are those who said the government was not interested in
demining and that conflict affected areas will remain unused forever. 69
percent of the demining in the North has already been completed. Some
said that the IDPs will be incarcerated indefinitely. 95% of the IDPs
have already been resettled. They claimed the lives of 11,600 LTTE
combatants were in danger. All but 750 have been released including 595
former child soldiers. Ambassador Ariyasinha had told those who doubted
Sri Lanka’s sincerity of purpose to look back at their own predictions
of doom, he said.
Amunugama said that the Sri Lankan delegation led by Plantation
Industries and Presdential Special envoy on Human Rights Minister
Mahinda Samarasinha is ready to answer questions, address concerns and
face challenges that may arise at the United Nations Human Rights
Council session scheduled to begin on February 27. He said that the
delegation will take an evidence based approach at the Council and are
in the process of completing the gathering of relevant material.
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