EU defers resolution against Lanka

AI calls for special UNHRC session after Arbour visit

The European Union has decided to defer a resolution against Sri Lanka, an EU diplomat in Geneva told the Daily Mirror even as human rights groups, on Monday asserted that the situation in Sri Lanka had deteriorated to serious levels.

Speaking on condition of anonymity the diplomat said the EU, which under the presidency of Portugal, was contemplating putting forward a resolution against Sri Lanka both at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and the EU Parliament in Brussels had decided to defer the move until the upcoming Lankan visit of Human Rights High Commissioner Louise Arbour.

“The EU has decided to wait till the end of her visit next month and see the outcome before deciding on the next move,” the diplomat said. On at least three earlier occasions in the past two years the EU deferred similar resolutions against Sri Lanka following intense lobbying by the government.

The New York based Human Rights Watch (HRW) presented a report to the EU Parliament and the UNHRC

in Geneva on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka and subsequently the government carried out its own lobbying by presenting a report to EU countries on the efforts taken to deal with human rights concerns. Meanwhile addressing the UNHRC on Monday Amnesty International representative Peter Splinter urged the council to have a special session following the visit of Ms. Arbour to Sri Lanka early next month adding the government's denial of the gravity of the situation had not helped improve it.

“The special session will allow it to receive and discuss an urgently needed comprehensive assessment of the human rights situation in Sri Lanka and explore measures that can assist the Government in improving that situation,” he said.

The AI said the severity of the violations and abuses requires that the Government address in the Council itself the need for investigations, prosecutions and other practical measures to end those violations and abuses.

Meanwhile Lukas Machon, of the International Commission of Jurists, also speaking at the session on Monday, said renewed violations by security forces and serious abuses by the LTTE demanded insistent condemnation and that the Human Rights Council should pressurize the Government to agree to establish a human rights presence.

(http://www.dailymirror.lk/2007/09/26/front/01.asp)