8 February 2010 08:36 am Views - 7600
The government has decided to meet the UN Human Rights Council Chief Navaneethan Pillai in Geneva tomorrow in order to counter allegations raised by former Army Chief General Sarath Fonseka regarding the final stages of the conflict.
Officials at the Human Rights Ministry told Daily Mirror Online that Minister Mahinda Samarasingha along with Attorney General Mohan Peiris left the island for Geneva today and would meet Ms. Pillai tomorrow. Minister Samarasingha and AG Peiris will also meet United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres to discuss the allegations by the General.
According to the official, Minister Samarasingha will also do the ground work for the Sri Lankan delegation taking part in the next Human Rights Council sessions before returning back to the island on Thursday.
The allegations which will be discussed are those leveled by General Fonseka to a weekend newspaper last month stating that Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse instructed a key ground commander in the north that all LTTE leaders must be killed and not allowed to surrender in the final stages of the war.
General Fonseka said that as an Army Commander, he had no information communicated to him in the final days of the war and that three key LTTE leaders had opted to surrender to Sri Lanka’s armed forces as the battle drew to a bloody finish.
Fonseka charged that communications were instead confined between the LTTE leaders, Norway, various foreign parties, Basil Rajapaksa, Member of Parliament and the powerful senior adviser to the President and such information was never conveyed to him as he supervised the final stages of the war.