Take note of UNHRC warning

If the Government's prevarication in bringing an alternate system of decentralisation of power to the Provincial Councils has brought about this situation either by design or by accident, news from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva this week must have only compounded its worries.

The UN High Human Rights Commissioner who was in Sri Lanka late last month presented her oral submissions to the UNHRC this week wherein she made it patently clear that Sri Lanka is in danger of having to face an international (war crimes) probe should an internal mechanism not be put in place for an impartial investigation into alleged violations of International Humanitarian Law during the last stages of the military onslaught on the LTTE.

The UN High Commissioner even blames the Government for its procrastination in bringing proper charges against captured LTTE cadres.

The Government is given six months -- till March next year -to get its act together. Like a dog with a bone, she won't let go, but has failed to see Sri Lanka's separatist insurgency in its totality and only limited the scope of the investigation to those final days -- clearly on the agenda of the Western countries, which, in turn, are under pressure from the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora. Sri Lanka might question the lady's mandate to do so, but the resolution is on the table and to take this salvo across the bow seriously, is surely in the Government's own interest.