Calgary Herald

Prince Charles, not Queen, to attend biennial gathering

- DANICA KIRKA

LONDON — The 87-year-old Queen Elizabeth II will skip the Commonweal­th heads of government meeting in Sri Lanka this fall — the first time she’s missed the biennial gathering since 1971.

The queen has long been a major supporter of the 54-nation Commonweal­th. Her decision, announced Tuesday, to send Prince Charles to the Nov. 15-17 meeting in Sri Lanka appears to be part of efforts to reduce her long-distance journeys.

It will also allow her to avoid attending the controvers­ial summit, which has been under fire by rights activists concerned about Sri Lanka’s wartime record of alleged abuses.

The monarch was briefly hospitaliz­ed for a stomach illness earlier this year, and did not attend the Commonweal­th Day Observance service at Westminste­r Abbey on March 11. She has rarely taken time off for illness, having carried out more than 400 official engagement­s in 2012 — ranging from private meetings with the prime minister to ceremonial gatherings.

The Commonweal­th summit brings together dozens of presidents and prime ministers from Britain’s former colonies — many of which were part of the British Empire in the queen’s youth.

Her father, King George VI, was emperor of India and the organizati­on means a great deal to her, said Philip Murphy, director of the Institute of Commonweal­th Studies and a professor at the University of London.

The queen missed the meeting in Singapore in 1971 amid a heated debate over Britain’s proposal to sell arms to South Africa.

Rights groups and some government­s have called for an internatio­nal probe into the alleged wartime abuses in Sri Lanka’s long civil war, which ended in 2009. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has opted not to attend the meeting.

The New-York-based Human Rights Watch has argued for a change of venue unless the Sri Lankan government “makes prompt, measurable and meaningful progress on human rights.”

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