CHATURANGA PRADEEP SAMARAWICKRAMA 
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UN disowns statements by Weiss
The United Nations does not endorse any statements made by its former UN spokesman Gordon Weiss, the Colombo UN office said today.
“Mr. Weiss is a former spokesman who was based in Colombo and his comments are his personal views on the situation that prevailed at the time. They don’t reflect those of the UN,” Colombo UN spokesman Tom Hockley told the Daily Mirror.
After the UN Experts’ Panel report was released, Mr. Weiss is reported to have made some controversial statements on the final stages of the war.
He had called for the investigation of foreign governments that supplied weapons to the Sri Lankan military during the last stages of the war.
“If foreign governments knew what was going on at this stage of the war and continued to supply arms, then I think it is a matter worthy of investigation,” he told the media, adding that the Indian government was aware of the situation in the North during the final stages of the war.
“I believe that Indians were aware of the civilian casualties, because they had pretty good intelligence inside the siege zone,” Mr. Weiss had said.
He claimed that although he was aware of the situation prevailing during the final stages of the war and he had discovered further facts while preparing his book.
“I was aware of it, a lot of it, but a lot of it I learned in the process of researching my own book in the year afterwards,” he told ABC Lateline in Australia. (Dianne Silva)
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