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Home » ColumnsOHCHR likely to play major role in war crimes probe
It went viral after a UN-based web outlet last Monday reported on the initial draft of a resolution the United States will move on Sri Lanka at the on-going Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva. Local and foreign media reproduced the four-page full text, posted as a cross reference to a report in the Inner City [...]
Geneva casino: Winners and losers
My Dear Mahinda maama, I thought I should be writing to you because these days, everybody is talking about Geneva and blaming it on you while you are busy talking to Indian Prime Ministers, entertaining Afghan Presidents and trying to win provincial council elections for your party! I know you tried to chat up Manmohan [...]
Ranil goes after Govt. on Colombo Port City Development Project
Questions about the Colombo Port City Development (CPCD) project once again came up in Parliament this week, with Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe calling upon the Government to table in the House, the project proposal pertaining to it, as well as the report of the Standing Cabinet Appointed Review Committee (SCARC) that has to study such [...]
Drought could impact adversely on economic performance
The continuation of the current drought could have a pervasive impact on the economy. The prospect of an improvement in the trade balance, and consequently a significant overall balance of payments surplus this year is threatened by drought conditions. Already agricultural production and hydropower generation have been reduced. Drought conditions since November last year have [...]
Wedding banquet shakes Karzai’s security ring
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is one of the most protected world leaders and is covered by a highly trained personal security detail which includes Pentagon bodyguards now working for Dynacorp, a private US military outfit. So when it came to addressing a news conference during his two-day visit, the men who accompanied him on the special [...]
What worth, our ‘sovereignty’?
Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations declared in Geneva this week that the draft resolution lodged with the Human Rights Council by the United States, the United Kingdom and three other member states violates Sri Lanka’s Constitution, is highly intrusive and breaches territorial integrity as well as peoples’ sovereignty. Let us look at [...]
UNHRC, war crimes and Sri Lanka – an alternative perspective
A third US-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka goes down to the wire at a vote in the UN Human Rights Council in less than three weeks. With the draft of that resolution in circulation among the council’s member states, it is now lobbying-time for stakeholders who seek to strengthen, dilute or amend the language of [...]
GL’s come or go Geneva speech ups the ante
Invigorated perhaps by the Alpine air, the Sri Lankan External Minister G. L. Peiris this week came out of his endangered corner in Geneva talking tough with both hands pistol packed and, firing at will, rejected outright the entire damning Pillay report as being ‘fundamentally flawed’ and ‘baseless’. In a bravura performance that must have [...]