President Rajapaksa’s UK visit postponed, not scrapped: FM
November 5, 2010 10:28 pm
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s proposed visit to the United Kingdom has been postponed and not cancelled as stated by certain sections of the media, says a release from the Ministry of External Affairs.
The statement adds, “His Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa has had a busy schedule of foreign visits recently to India, the United States of America and China. There is also the important matter of the inauguration of his second term of office in mid-November, leading to a very busy schedule in Sri Lanka.
“As such his proposed visit to the United Kingdom at the invitation of the Oxford Union has been postponed, to a more suitable time, and the British authorities so informed.
“It is regretted that the media organizations that carried the news item about the alleged cancellation of the proposed visit by the President to the United Kingdom have done so without any inquiry from the Ministry of External Affairs, the Presidential Secretariat or the Sri Lanka High Commission in London.”
Meanwhile, reports in the Indian media PTI stated that reacting to an Indian press report that the President had cancelled the visit fearing arrest, a Sri Lankan External Affairs Ministry official said the report was “false and misleading.”
The report had said that the Lankan President had scrapped the visit following fears that he might be arrested for alleged war-crimes under British law.
It also said that certain Sri Lankan Tamil organisations were planning to move court for his arrest for alleged rights abuses in his successful military campaign which ended 30-year of separatist campaign on the island.
The report cited the case of arrest by Scotland Yard in 1998 of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London for atrocities against Spanish civilians during his 17-year-rule.
It also referred to the refusal by US authorities to grant a visa to the chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi over similar human rights allegations.
“The report is not only false but misleading”, Bandula Jayasekera, the Director of Publicity, in the External Affairs Ministry said.
Without mentioning the dates of the visit Jayasekera said it had only been postponed till December.
He gave no reasons for the postponement, stated PTI.