THE UNITED STATES has urged Sri Lanka to forge ahead with political talks with the main Tamil party, eliminate paramilitary groups in the former war zone and deliver a credible investigation into the end of its civil war in 2009.
Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affair Robert Blake, who served as U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka at the end of its quarter-century civil war also urged the government to deploy Tamil police in the island`s north.
The Indian Ocean nation is facing increased pressure from the West to probe allegations of war crimes and humanitarian law violations at the end of its war with the Tamil Tiger separatists in 2009.
Sri Lanka`s Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) is due to present its findings on the war`s last months to President Mahinda Rajapaksa in November this year.
"We hope that will be a credible process. If it is not a credible process, there will be pressure for some kind of an alternative mechanism," Blake said at the end of a three-day trip to Sri Lanka.
Blake said that accountability for alleged war crimes was as important as dealing with the political issues which remain unsettled after the government`s victory.
"The solution to achieving a just and lasting peace in Sri Lanka is not just about accountability. It is a much wider series of things which have to be addressed and I think that the government is addressing them," Blake said.
A United Nations sponsored report says that there is "credible evidence" that tens of thousands of civilians died in the last months of an on-again, off-again civil war that flared in 1983 after decades of tension between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has sent the report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Sri Lanka has been on a diplomatic offensive in Geneva to discredit the allegations, which it has long said are biased, exaggerated and fronted by Tamil Tiger supporters.
Blake praised the government and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) party for agreeing to resume talks on a post-war political settlement this week, which stalled when the TNA pulled out over what it called government foot-dragging.
"I did detect an element of sincerity there and I hope that they (both sides) will follow through and that both sides will engage to produce that outcome," Blake said.
Tamil parties want a greater devolution of powers to the former war zone in the north and east, which the Tamil Tigers fought to turn into a Tamil-only state. Those include greater financial, land and police powers at a provincial level.
