05/10/2011
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Inner City Press
UNITED NATIONS, May 10 -- As Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN Palitha Kohona walked out of the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Inner City Press asked him about the European Union's statement on the UN Panel of Experts war crimes report, and about reported “militarization” of Colombo.
04/27/2011
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Inner City Press
UNITED NATIONS, April 27 -- On Sri Lanka, UN “staff were not in the position to assess” the number of casualties in 2009, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky told the Press on April 27, as they had to withdraw because the Government said security could not be guaranteed.
04/21/2011
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Inner City Press
UNITED NATIONS, April 21 -- In a loss of nerve that sadly is not surprising, the UN Secretariat on Thursday delayed its noon briefing in the expectation that it would belatedly release its Panel of Experts' report on war crimes in Sri Lanka -- and then did not release the report.
04/21/2011
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Inner City Press
UNITED NATIONS, April 21 -- After the UN said it would release its Panel of Experts' report on Sri Lanka “this week,” at 6:20 pm the evening before the Easter holiday UN acting deputy spokesman Farhan Haq backtracked and announced that it would not be released this week. He referred to “after the Easter holiday,” but he had also said “this week.”
04/18/2011
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Inner City Press
UNITED NATIONS, April 18 -- While UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sits on the Panel of Experts' report on Sri Lanka, it was scheduled to be a topic in the UN Security Council's Monday afternoon meeting, Ban's top political official Lynn Pascoe told Inner City Press Monday at 3 pm.
04/16/2011
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Inner City Press
WASHINGTON, April 16 -- When the UN gave a copy of its long delayed Panel of Experts' report on war crimes in Sri Lanka to the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa while withholding it from the press and public, the next steps were foreseeable.
First, the government criticized the report as “flawed” and “baseless” while no one else could see it.
04/15/2011
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Inner City Press
WASHINGTON, April 15, updated -- This is no way to conduct, or release, an inquiry into war crimes. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who claimed UN Panel of Experts could travel to Sri Lanka due to President Mahinda Rajapaksa's “flexibility,” belatedly got the report on April 12.
04/14/2011
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Inner City Press
On Sri Lanka, the Obama administration would like the Mahinda Rajapaksa government to “use” the Panel of Experts report on presumptive war crimes in the final stages of the conflict, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told Inner City Press on Thursday.
Toner said the US has “encouraged the Sri Lankan government to engage in a process of accountability” and to “use the Panel of Experts and its expertise to address that.” Video here.
03/11/2011
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Inner City Press
UNITED NATIONS, March 11 -- On Sri Lanka, a complaint filed with the International Criminal Court against Palitha Kohona states of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff that there is “a basis to question whether Vijay Nambiar was in fact an innocent neutral intermediary or in fact a co-perpetrator within the negotiation related community.”
02/23/2011
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Inner City Press
UNITED NATIONS, February 23 -- Amid controversy about the UN's seeming failure to follow up on accountability for presumptive war crimes in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Sri Lanka, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his chief of staff Vijay Nambiar met Wednesday with the country's Attorney General Mohan Peiris and its Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, former General Shavendra Silva.