Lankan Reconciliation Commission should be given another chance - Blake
June 14, 2010 11:41 am
The US and India are in sync with their foreign policy toward Sri Lanka, particularly over the repatriation of the remaining 40,000 plus internally displaced persons after the government’s victory over the LTTE in the Tamil-populated northern province, said Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Robert O Blake.
In an interview with rediff.com, Blake, the Obama administration’s pointman
for the subcontinent, said, “The US and
“We have worked very closely throughout the last several years on the
situation in
Blake noted that the
“For example, (programmes for) those who have been released from the camps and to encourage new business developmentin the north, because that will be critical to enabling stability in that area that has been undeveloped and suffered so much after the LTTE rule of 30 years,” he said.
Blake said the
Blake was circumspect when asked about the recent threat by Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse -- the brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse -- to hang former General Sarath Fonseka, who is under house arrest.
But when pressed, Blake said, “We have expressed our interest in ensuring that General Fonseka is treated fairly and in accordance with Sri Lankan law.”
“We were pleased to hear that whatever decisions are made by the military courts, which are now considering the two different charges against General Fonseka, will be reviewed by higher Sri Lankan civilian courts that that will be done in a public manner, so that there will be an assurance of due process,” he said.
“So, now we’ll have to just see. We have not had access to the charges against General Fonseka. So, we are really not in a position to comment on those,” he added.
Blake said the recent meeting of Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Gamini Laskhman
Peiris with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in
He said US had welcomed the steps taken by the Sri Lankan government including the forming of a Reconciliation Commission, “now that its two elections (presidential and parliamentary) are behind it and now that the President has a two-thirds majority in parliament”.
He said US has asked
“This Commission should now be given a chance to do its work and we have
laid out a series ofparameters that were described by Ambassador (Susan) Rice (
Blake said the administration was pleased that Peiris had “said that the
commission that
When pointed out that critics have slammed the Reconciliation Commission as a sham, Blake acknowledged that “it’s a government appointed commission but it does have independent experts on the commission -- not everybody on the Commission is a government employee”.
“In fact, very few of them are.”
“We always believe that it’s best to have domestic answers to these very serious problems that exist because those in the long run -- if they are credible and independent and really get to the bottom of whatever the issue is -- will be much more acceptable domestically and that’s particularly true in a country like Sri Lanka, where there is still some polarisation,” he said.
However, Blake noted that groups like International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch and others have
been skeptical because “
“So it’s really incumbent upon the Sri Lankans to show that this is going to be different and Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Peiris went to great length to explain that this is going to be different and that this will produce concrete, serious results,” he said.
rediff