Sri Lanka has sought two more years from the UN to probe the alleged war crimes committed during the conflict with the LTTE despite international concerns over the slow pace of the investigation.
Sri Lanka has sought two more years from the UN to probe the alleged war crimes committed during the conflict with the LTTE despite international concerns over the slow pace of the investigation.
Sri Lanka had been granted 18 months by a UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution in October 2015 to initiate a credible investigation into the
nearly three-decades long civil war with the LTTE.
The foreign ministry yesterday said it has sought more time to deliver on accountability mechanism.
"What Sri Lanka will undertake at the current 34th session (of the UNHRC), is a two-year extension of the timeline for fulfilment of commitments made in Resolution 30/1 (in October 2015)," the ministry said.
According to the UN figures, up to 40,000 civilians were killed by the security forces during former president Mahinda Rajapaksa's regime that brought an end to the conflict with the defeat of LTTE in 2009.
Earlier this month, the UNHRC had criticised Sri Lanka's "slow" progress in addressing its wartime past and reiterated its earlier call for hybrid court of international and local judges to investigate allegations of rights violations.
However, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe rejected the demand, saying it was impractical.
The country's main ethnic Tamil party, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), has taken a stance that Sri Lanka be given more time by the UN to meet all obligations.
However, TNA's rival groups are opposed to giving more time by the UNHRC to implement the 2015 resolution's accountability mechanism.
"The TNA has excluded the opinion of the majority of Tamils. After one and a half years, the government has not done anything, disappeared people have not been found," Tamil National People's Front spokesman S Kajendran said.
"TNA leader M A Sumanthiran is not speaking for the suffering Tamils," he told reporters in Jaffna.
The TNA and its moderate group headed by the main opposition leader R Sampanthan and Sumanthiran are accused of trying to appease the majority Sinhala government by giving more time to implement the accountability mechanism.
President Maithripala Sirisena government is opposed to the international hybrid court.
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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