Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris travelled to the United States to make yet another presentation on the “progress” since the war with the Tamil Tigers ended in May 2009; and the United States once again reiterated the need for transparency in Sri Lanka's plans, accountability for war crimes, and speeding up the process of reconciliation.
Prof. Peiris did not present an action plan on the path that Sri Lanka would take from now on and generally repeated ideas that were talked about at the last session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had a 45-minute meeting with Prof. Peiris, repeated much of the same vocabulary that the U.S. has used in the past year — according to State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, she “encouraged a really transparent, open, public process, not only on the LLRC specifically and its implementation, but also with regard to accountability; to strengthen reconciliation, public confidence inside and outside Sri Lanka in the process; and frankly, to speed the healing of the country.”
“She also stressed the importance, as she always does, of demilitarising the North; of getting to the provincial elections in the North; protection of human rights, including protection of the press; and generally the creation of an environment that's inclusive; engagement and the creation of space for civil society along the lines of what she talked about globally earlier in the week,” Ms. Nuland said, even as the Sri Lankan President dismissed the demand for demilitarisation of the North, in under 12 hours of the Peiris-Clinton meeting.
The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry said “Minister Peiris outlined the mechanism adopted by Sri Lanka's presidential secretariat that will be used to implement recommendations made by the independent Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), which examined Sri Lanka's successful conflict against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.” The LLRC report has been given to the President's Secretary, Lalith Weeratunga, who was also part of the delegation, so that he can suggest which of the recommendations could be implemented. He told The Hindu, on the sidelines of a function here last week that he had already read the report long back, but did not commit on which recommendations could be implemented.
The commission issued its final report, and 285 recommendations, late last year. The government at that time announced its intention to adopt many of the recommendations.
A State department release of the press meet, forwarded by the U.S. Embassy here, noted that reporters asked Ms. Nuland if, on the question of accountability, Ms. Clinon referred specifically to prosecuting war crimes at the end of the war — the 40,000 civilians who died. “This is precisely what we mean when we talk about accountability in all of it…She's spoken in general terms, and then there were separate meetings with the [Sri Lankan] delegation that Bob Blake [Robert O' Blake, Assistant Secretary of State, South and central Asia], had, that Mike Posner [Assistant Secretary of State, Democracy, Human Rights and Labour] had, to go through the details,” Ms. Nuland added.
Sri lanka must co-operate with any International Investigation into
allegd war Crimes. ex -army chief Sarath Fonseka has told the BBC, a day
after his release from Jail.
Unfortunately we are compel to say to Mrs.Clinton, to mind your own
business. It is true that this is an era where US dominate, but one
must remember every thing is temporary and nothing is permanent
according to Lord Buddha's teachings. The US may well be asking for
trouble by wrong assessments and solutions given by their intelligence
services. The movies that I watched and books that I read of US intelligence agencies speaks highly of their accuracy and ability. But
as a Sri Lankan living in Sri Lanka I can say they have got it wrong
and lord knows how many blunders they pulled triggering various catastrophic situations.
Who is Hillary? Is she a member of parliment voted in by people in Sri lanka or a senior public servant with high qualifications in Sri Lanka. I never heard of anybody in that name in Sri lanka.
@Darshi, The world knows that the Sinhala racists label anyone who demands for accountability, Justice, Rule of Law, Human Rights and Transparency as LTTE puppet. This is the best JOKE of the 21st Century. The Rajapakse regime regime has committed human rights abuses, crimes against humanity and war crimes. All crimes including LTTE crimes must be investigated by an independent International body and take appripriate action. The Rajapakse regime blocks every attempt to bring those criminals to face the law as they committed much more attrocities than Pol Pot, Saddam, Gaddhafi and Milosevic. 34 Journalists and 17 French Charity workers have been murdered in Sri Lanka and no one is brought to justice to date. This is the worst regime of the 21st Century that denies democratic values. Selvi Jeyalalithaa has demanded to declare Rajapakse as the war criminal and the UPA regime has not done so as they collaborated with the SL regime.
USA is losing big time in Afghan war. Now 3,000+ dead in Afghanistan. USA is going to lose this war. That is why this jealousy to little island Sri Lanka.
Hillary, where is transparency in your actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya? ... Did you close the Guantanamo bay camp? ... Did you close CIA black camps? ... Did you ever work to investigate Democrat Senator Bob Kerrey who openly admitted to a cold blooded massacre of 20 to 25 innocent Vietnamese civilians? Physician heal thyself! We sadly see festering wounds with maggots all over a “physician” who is claiming to know how to cure everyone else! Sorry, no thank you! Please mind your own business.
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