State will continue to work with UN:

Government to respond in detail to report

Will include post war development in North :

Irangika RANGE and Sandasen MARASINGHE

External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris told Parliament yesterday that Sri Lanka will send a detailed response to the controversial Darusman Report to United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) Ban ki Moon.

Minister Prof  G L Peiris

The Minister making a special statement said it would contain details of the on-going development process in the North since the war ended as well as the rehabilitation of former LTTE cadres including child soldiers.

He said that a report made by an advisory panel to the UNSG opens old wounds that are healing after the war.

It will only cause mistrust and hatred among the communities. Prof Peiris said he had spoken to the UNSG last Sunday via telephone and had a cordial discussion with him.

The UNSG had informed him that the report had no relevance to the UN or any other bodies coming under the UN since Sri Lanka had not taken it up with the UN. The committee which compiled the report was only an advisory body.

The Minister reiterated that the Government would continue to work with the UN despite the fact that the Report has been made public.

The Minister also said he will be visiting India and China to discuss the Report and seek their assistance in this regard.

It was wrong to identify the report made by the panel as a UN report. It is a basic misnomer to call it a UN Report. It was a private initiative of the UNSG to appoint a committee to advise him. The UNSG himself had repeatedly emphasised that the committee was only an advisory body. The report or the committee had not formal nexus with the UN or UN body. The Government does not agree with the report or its content due to several reasons. The report’s content does the gravest possible damage to the delicate reconciliation process, he said. The report is detrimental to the ongoing reconciliation process. The process followed by the Committee is flawed. It had done no investigation neither it had any power of investigating allegations against a UN member country. The report says it had come to a conclusion with credible evidence that Sri Lankan Security Forces had committed war crimes. How could a committee arrive at such conclusions without proper investigation, the Minister quarried.

The committee is prejudiced against Sri Lanka and this is evidence in the way the report starts itself. The report says at the beginning the last phase of the war against LTTE was tragic. Was it tragic from the viewpoint of Sri Lankan people or any peace loving human who are against terrorism? It was tragic only for the terrorists. The Committee had travelled far beyond its mandate to accuse Sri Lankan troops of war crimes.

The Government would commence a campaign to apprise its friendly nations of this situation and the post conflict recovery measures it had taken and their progress, he said.

He said he would meet Indian Government representatives on the 15th and Chinese Government representatives on 17th of this month in this regard. The forthcoming Non Aligned Movement meeting scheduled to be held in Bali in Indonesia to meet member countries of the movement will also be used for this purpose, he added.