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Saturday, 24 November 2012

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DESTROY BY LEAK

This appears to be the latest trend among international civil servants of responsible global organizations these days -- damn a country, malign her good name, and be damned the consequences, all on the basis of a leaked report.

We carry below and on the front page, the External Affairs Ministry's response to the leaked Petrie report, which seemed to have surreptitiously sneaked out of some civil servant's drawer in the UN, in the way some amoeba might get carelessly strewn out of a laboratory petri-dish.

The sad truth about all of this is that the Petrie report, as was the Darusman report, was a document meant for internal circulation of the UN agency under whose authority it was written.

The leak, then, one does not need a genius to tell, was an inspired affair.

The report is meant to assess the workings of the United Nations system in Sri Lanka, but then, it is now masquerading as an indictment on the way the war on the LTTE was prosecuted in the last stages of the armed confrontation.

The pattern is to leak the document first, and then release it to the media the next day, on the basis that it has been dispatched to the public domain anyway due to the leak ...

The report's censored part, not surprisingly quite favourable to Sri Lanka, is itself testimony to the fact that some of the casualty figures of the document for instance, are mere hear and tell -- hearsay as they say in legalese.

Whenever there appears to be closure on the issue of damning false allegations about the conduct of the last stages of the war, a fresh ogre seems to be sprung out of the UN bottle through these inspired leaks.

None of these leaked UN papers care to state that the LTTE was firing artillery rounds from areas of civilian concentration, making it imperative that the Sri Lankan forces react with reasonable force, despite the possibility of some civilian casualties.

Those who resort to such inspired leaks, at least ought to make sure that there is credibility in the exercise of 'slash and burn by leak.'

Not so, obviously, as parts in the Petrie report which have been blacked out bear testimony to. The expunged areas invariably deal with 'positive results' emerging over time despite the extraordinarily trying circumstances etc.

It is not a joke that UN offices and agencies are hijacked in this way, to up the ante on sinister and ongoing campaigns against member states.

This is reprehensible spy/spook cloak and dagger behaviour on the part of international civil servants who are paid from contributions of all member states.

But yet, there is no dearth of international organizations - entire countries - which wouldn't hesitate to quote chapter and verse from these 'UN reports' which are neither 'UN' or 'reports' in the strict sense.

They are not 'UN' because they are not officially UN sanctioned reports that are meant for the public domain, and they are not 'reports' because they are mere advisory documents for internal circulation within the relevant agencies.

The point is that there should be a set of UN and international civil servants and international organization guidelines that basically outlaw this kind of search and destroy mission engineered stealthily from within UN offices.

The fact is that hearsay advice may be passable for internal consumption and getting the respective acts of individual UN agencies together.

But, are these reports willfully created and then leaked for a more sinister purpose? Such a reaction certainly does not sound as if it is paranoid when considering that from time to time, there have been reports springing from nowhere, almost mushrooming from out there in the dunes -- Darusman, Petrie, and what else in the future?

A formal protest should be lodged within the UN system, to outlaw the release of such internal reports in the public domain and this step should be taken in concert among all friends of Sri Lanka, as Sri Lanka may be the victim today and another country tomorrow, of such stealth attacks that essentially emerge from under the radar and plunder with the violence of drones.

Will China’s 18th Party Congress be a turning point?

China considers its people as the masters of the nation. Therefore, unlike in the representative form of democracy, the people at grass root level through extensive dialogue and interaction decide on the policies to be pursued by the country. The Communist Party of China (CPC) through its various people’s organizations, mainly workers, peasants, women, youth, students, with the participation of academics, experts and intellectuals decide upon the development programmes,

Full Story

External Affairs Ministry Responds:

Petrie prejudiced

The Ministry of External Affairs refers to the ‘Report of the Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel on UN action in Sri Lanka’ or the ‘Petrie Report’ which was leaked to the media the day prior to its being formally handed over to the Secretary General on November14, and officially made public the same day.

Full Story

 

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