As the separate US, Japanese and United Nations officials arrived in Colombo, the government furiously denied that any war crimes were committed during the final months of fighting last year.
The US embassy in Colombo said the two advisers had been sent by US President Barack Obama to discuss issues including the military offensive that ended the decades-long war with separatist Tamil rebels in May 2009.
Samantha Power, special assistant to the president on multilateral affairs and human rights, and David Pressman, national security council director for war crimes and atrocities, will hold four days of meetings in Sri Lanka.
The embassy said the visit followed last month’s meeting in Washington between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G L Peiris.
The US has been pressing for an independent war crimes investigation into the final phase of fighting that ended with the Tamil Tigers’ defeat. Sri Lanka this week is also hosting two other international envoys to discuss peace and reconciliation and alleged human rights abuses during the war. UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s top political adviser, Lynn Pascoe, and Japan’s special envoy to Sri Lanka, Yasushi Akashi, were due on Tuesday for talks with Sri Lankan officials.
Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse said those making war crimes allegations had failed to prove their claims. “I challenge them to produce evidence,” he told the Sinhalese-language Lankadeepa newspaper. “There is no point in giving photographs and videos to the media. We have an established legal system. Use it.”
Sri Lanka has denied any civilians were killed during the final offensive against the rebels last year, although the United Nations reported that at least 7,000 Tamil civilians perished in 2009.
Published in the Express Tribune, June 16th, 2010.
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