US ‘disappointed’ with SL: Blake
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert Blake has said the US is ‘disappointed’ with Sri Lanka over its failure to address several issues in- cluding the implementation of the LLRC action plan.
I’ve been working on Sri Lanka now for six years and know the country extremely well and consider myself a friend and a supporter of the country.
Mr. Blake told the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on Tuesday that progress thus far on implementing the LLRC action plan has been slow.“We’ve been disappointed that the government has not proceeded so far with elections for the Northern Provincial Council even four years after the end of the war,” he said.
Following are some of what he told the subcommittee:
“I’ve been working on Sri Lanka now for six years and know the country extremely well and consider myself a friend and a supporter of the country.
As you know at the end of the conflict there were many questions about the number of civilians killed at the last stages of the war. An independent UN panel estimated the number of innocent civilians killed to be between 10,000 and 40,000. Nonetheless the United States decided that we will support a domestic probe that is a Sri Lankan domestic process to try to get to its bottom and to investigate it and to develop what is now called a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission process.
But we did so with the understanding that there will be rapid progress towards reconciliation and accountability, and I must say progress thus far on implementing the LLRC action plan has been slow and we’ve been disappointed as you say that the government has not proceeded so far with elections for the Northern Provincial Council four years after the end of the war, we’ve been disappointed that there hasn’t been a conclusion of the dialogue between the Tamil National Alliance – the umbrella groups, the Tamil groups as well as the TNA dialogue with the government on devolution and we’ve been disappointed that there has been some backward movement on democracy, as you say, things like the 13th amendment and the recent impeachment of Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice.