Sri Lanka raises objections with UN on war crimes probe

Sri Lanka Monday raised objections with the UN office in Colombo regarding the manner in which an investigation is being conducted on the war against Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka.

Minister of External Affairs G.L. Peiris met Resident Coordinator of the UN in Sri Lanka Subinay Nandy and conveyed to him the government's discontent concerning the manner in which the investigation was being conducted by the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

The external affairs ministry said the minister's protest to the UN resident coordinator focused on the unacceptable way in which the deadline for evidence submission which had originally been set Oct 30 by the OHCHR had been changed unofficially and reset once again, Xinhua reported.

According to the OHCHR's call for submissions on its website, the deadline was definite and mandatory.

However, an OHCHR spokesperson, in response to a question from a local newspaper, stated that although officially the deadline was Oct 30 and will not be extended, it was understood that some materials might take time to arrive and submissions arriving late, therefore, would not necessarily be refused.

Corresponding to this comment, the OHCHR website did not announce the closure of the e-mail address for the receipt of submissions even after the official deadline had passed. It was only pursuant to the matter having been taken up very strongly by the government that the OHCHR later issued a news release announcing that submissions ended Oct 30 and the e-mail address had ceased to exist.