The UN has called for an independent international probe into allegations of war crimes in Sri lanka during the final battle with the lTTE, prompting an angry reaction from Colombo which on Tuesday rejected the demand and slammed it as “unwarranted interference”.
In a UN report published on Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navy Pillay asked for setting up of an independent probe and said Sri lanka had “consistently failed to establish the truth”. In her report Pillay said, “National mechanisms have consistently failed to establish the truth and achieve justice.”
“The High Commissioner believes this can no longer be explained as a function of time or technical capacity, but that it is fundamentally a question of political will,” the report stated. “She remains convinced that an independent, international inquiry would play a positive role in eliciting new information and establishing the truth where domestic inquiry mechanisms have failed,” it said. President Mahida Rajapaksa’s Government formally rejected Pillay’s demand for “an independent, international inquiry”.