SL to probe its own war abuses...

Sri Lanka yesterday said it will conduct its own investigation into allegations of war abuses including those by its armed forces, the country’s foreign minister said, rejecting calls for setting up an international tribunal. “The Sri Lankan Attorney-General has started the inquiry into the alleged war abuses and human rights violations that occurred during the last few months of end of the civil war,” G.L Peiris, told reporters at a news conference held here at the end of his four-day US trip. “The investigations would include alleged violations by the security forces too,” he said. Peiris made these comments after meeting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, where he presented a detailed reconciliation plan to the US administration. During the meeting, Clinton strongly urged “accountability”, in probing the war crimes allegations “to strengthen reconciliation, public confidence inside and outside Sri Lanka, and, frankly, to speed the healing of the country,” according to the State Department spokesperson Ms. Victoria Nuland. The meeting comes in the wake of strained ties between Washington and Colombo over the American sponsorship of a UN human rights resolution calling on Sri Lanka to conduct an independent probe into civilian deaths in the final phase of the country’s civil war that ended in 2009. Ms. Nuland said that Colombo had presented “serious and comprehensive” plans for recommendations of a probe into human rights abuses that now needed to be made public and put into practice. “The local inquiry has just started. It has to be given a reasonable opportunity to move forward and to come to a conclusion. Until that is done, any kind of intervention by any kind of international tribunal is premature,” Peiris told reporters. The Lankan foreign minister said the Sri Lankan delegation accompanying him gave a “comprehensive” account to the US official of the steps it has taken after the end of the civil war and towards addressing the concerns of the international community. However, he insisted that there was no document handed over. “There was no document which we handed over with regard to an action plan. But what we explained to them did constitute a comprehensive account of what we have done, what is now being done, and our thoughts relating to the trajectory for the future,” Peiris said.