SRI LANKA’S military will act against any soldiers who may have committed war crimes or other excesses in the last months of its 25 year civil war, the island nation`s influential defence secretary has said.
Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa`s comments come as President Mahinda Rajapaksa, his elder brother prepares to make public next month the findings of a commission that probed the end of the separatist war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which Sri Lanka won in May 2009.
Sri Lanka is facing Western calls for an external investigation.
But the United States, India and other countries have said credible action based on the findings of the local inquiry, along with political concessions to minorities including Tamils would obviate the need for an outside probe.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the decorated veteran infantry officer who engineered the final campaign to destroy the LTTE, said the government would act on the findings of the local panel, the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).
"If, in the future, any substantial evidence is provided on crimes committed by its personnel, the Sri Lankan military will not hesitate to take appropriate action," Rajapaksa said in an address at a post- war reconciliation conference.
A U.N. sponsored panel has said it has found "credible evidence" that the military killed thousands of civilians in the last months of Sri Lanka`s war in 2009 and that both sides committed atrocities.
Sri Lanka says the report regurgitates charges fabricated by the Tamil Tigers` overseas propaganda network and that its soldiers acted in accordance with international law. It demanded its sovereign right to investigate itself first.
