Without going into details of its resolution against Sri lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva this week, the United States has said that it expects strong support from member-countries for the move spearheaded by it since Colombo had failed to fulfil its promises.
“We’re working with a lot of governments who share our concerns about the lack of progress in Sri lanka,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters in comments made prior to the dilution of the draft resolution in order to gather more support.
“We made clear publicly and privately that this (resolution) was a response to the fact that we just didn’t see the kind of movement (on Sri lanka’s part) that was necessary. We didn’t see promises fulfilled. So we’re being very transparent with the Government of Sri lanka, and we’re expecting strong support for the resolution that we’ve put forward,” Nuland said.
Indicating that Washington has been pushing Colombo on this score for a long time, Nuland recalled how the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had made it clear to her visiting Sri lankan counterpart last year that “if we didn’t have progress, we would go forward, and that’s what we have done”.
“The best thing that the Government of Sri lanka could do for its own people and to undercut the claims of these (pro-lTTE) groups would be to fulfill the obligations that it made to the international community to take the process forward. So that hasn’t happened and we are taking more measures in the Human Rights Council to make clear that progress has been insufficient,” the spokesperson said, when asked if its resolution would end up giving a boost to pro-lTTE sentiments.
last Friday, during the UNHRC’s consideration of outcome of the Universal Periodic Review on Sri lanka, the United States expressed its disappointment that Colombo “had rejected the implementation of the recommendations of its lessons learnt and Reconciliation (llC) Commission and nearly all recommendations to engage with the United Nations Special Procedures mandate holders”.
The one aspect that the US welcomed at the meeting was Sri lanka’s acceptance of
recommendations to combat gender-based violence and investigate breaches of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
China, Pakistan and Russia came out in support of Sri lanka during the session. China spoke of the island nation’s “important achievements in advancing domestic reconciliation” and called on the international community to “respect Sri lanka’s sovereignty….and avoid interfering in its domestic affairs”. Pakistan said it was “encouraging to see that Sri lanka had made 19
voluntary commitments”.