UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon may have second thoughts about appointing a panel of experts to advise him on "accountability issues" relating to the Sri Lankan conflict where the armed forces have been accused of human rights violations and war crimes.
"He is still to consider such a panel's terms of reference and is in contact with his advisers, including the UN Human Rights High Commissioner (Navi Pillay) on this," UN spokesman Farhan Haq told the Sunday Times.
He said no persons had been suggested to him as experts yet. "It is unlikely that such a panel will be actually established very soon," he added.
Sri Lanka's UN Ambassador Palitha Kohona last week fired off a strong letter of protest warning the UN that any unilateral attempts to appoint a panel would meet with a negative response causing considerable strains to the existing relationship between the UN and Sri Lanka.
In an implicit threat, Dr. Kohona also said that any unwelcome interference by the UN in the domestic affairs of Sri Lanka would seriously jeopardize the government's efforts to work with the UN.
On Thursday, the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the largest single political coalition at the United Nations, expressed "deep concern" over Mr. Ban's unilateral decision to create the proposed panel, and made two serious charges against him: attempting to violate the UN charter and trying to interfere in the domestic affairs of a member state.
"The Non-Aligned Movement strongly condemns selective targeting of individual countries, which it deems contrary to the founding principles of the Movement and the United Nations Charter," said Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz of Egypt, the current NAM chair, in a letter to the secretary-general.
The letter also points out that neither the Security Council nor the General Assembly, nor its subsidiary Human Rights Council, has made any pronouncements on alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka or mandated any particular course of action. |
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