Two days after the Northern Provincial Council demanded an international inquiry into alleged war crimes, the Sri Lankan government has not responded to the resolution that goes against its own position on an outside investigation, but an official aide to President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in Washington that holding an international probe would only cause chaos.
Secretary to the President, Lalith Weeratunga, currently in the United States to lobby against a possibly strong resolution in Geneva, said the country needed at least five years – from the July 2012 date which the Sri Lankan government considers as the start of its reconciliation process – for the effort to take root, news agency Reuters has reported..
The report, published in the state-owned Daily News on Wednesday, quoted him as saying: “After 26 years of conflict ... we want to make it a sustainable peace. It's a very delicate, delicate process.”
Mr. Weeratunga said: “If there is an international investigation, the whole period has to be investigated - from the 1980s onward - which includes the two-year tenure of the Indian peacekeeping force, which will upset India, which will upset our relationship with India.”
Observers here say that by adopting the resolution, the NPC is being openly hostile to the Sri Lankan administration.
Speaking to The Hindu , Dayan Jayatilleka, a former Sri Lankan envoy to the U.N. in Geneva said the resolution did not present the Council as a pragmatic partner in the process of political resettlement. “The resolutions are not only premature, but dangerously polarising,” he said.
