Sri Lanka rights resolution watered down: Minister

The US has failed to win support for its resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC as the latest draft does not call for an international probe, a senior minister claimed today.
"We have achieved a victory as the draft resolution now is without the words 'international investigation,'" Irrigation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva told reporters.
"The US was telephoning government leaders to seek support, but they have failed to win support for an international investigation."
"One Ambassador told me how the US Ambassador and the British High Commissioner had brought pressure on him to support the resolution," he said.

The US has failed to win support for the resolution coming up later this month to force an international investigation into the alleged war crimes during the fag end of the LTTE war, the minister said.
"This is no easy task, we are taking the might of US on. This is a matter of pride for us as a nation," de Silva said.

He, however, cautioned that the US can move an addendum at a "very last stage".
It has been widely expected that the resolution, to be voted this week, would call for an international probe.
Meanwhile, Britain, one of the co-sponsors of the resolution, today expressed hope that Sri Lanka will grant full access to the investigators if the resolution ended up calling for an international probe.

British Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire said in a tweet that Sri Lanka's mechanisms were not adequate to address human rights accountability issues.
Sri Lanka is facing its third UN Human Rights Council resolution in three years, censuring the country on its lack of progress on human rights accountability and reconciliation with its Tamil minority after the civil war ended with the defeat of the LTTE in May, 2009.
Previously, two such resolutions were backed by India.