Govt protests Petrie Report leak to media

The External Affairs Ministry formally protested against the leak of the ‘Report of the Secretary General’s Internal Review Review Panel on UN Action in Sri Lanka’ or the ‘Petrie Report’ to the media, the day prior to it being formally handed over to the Secretary General on November 14.

While questioning the integrity of the report, the Sri Lanka government through its permanent Mission in New York protested against the leak of the Report on the very day, after the questionable action, to the office of the Secretary General.

“The ‘Petrie Report’ is an internal document to assess the working of the United Nations System in Sri Lanka during the given period, following a recommendation in the Report of the advisory panel of experts appointed by the Secretary General, known as the

"Darusman Report", the statement issued by the External Affairs Ministry said,

While noting that both Reports are internal advisories to the UN, " it is disconcerting that the 'Darusman Report', came into the public domain initially through a leak, and in this instance of the 'Petrie Report' too, the unacceptable procedure of leaking has been resorted to, establishing a disturbing pattern which bring into question the 'bonafides', of the authorship of the document and its underlying motivations," the Statement pointed out. While stating that the "Sri Lanka Governemnt does not intend to comment on the entirety of its contents, the External Affairs

Ministry Statement said that " this Report seems to seek to endorse the baseless and discredited allegations, in the Darusman Report, of an exaggerated civilian casualty figure during the last stages of the terrorist conflict, which has not been agreed upon even among the senior UN officials at the time, because of the speculative nature of the information which could not be verified.