Colombo: A Sri Lankan panel looking into the
ethnic conflict in the country will submit its crucial report
by November 15, a top official of the Lessons Learnt and
Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) has said.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa set up the LLRC in May 2010
to probe the events between February 2002 to May 2009 when the
civil war came to an end with the defeat of the LTTE.
LLRC spokesman Lakshman Wickremasinghe said there is no
pressure on the reconciliation panel.
Neither the United Nations nor the government could
pressure the LLRC to complete its probe report by September to
present it to the UN General Assembly, Wickremasinghe was
quoted as saying by Colombopage, the Sri Lankan online
newspaper.
He said the government was unlikely to put pressure on
the LLRC and seek the Commission`s final report in a hurry.
The LLRC said its final report would be submitted on
November 15 and not before the set date due to any pressure.
The LLRC final report would, therefore, not be submitted
to the UN General Assembly, the report said.
LLRC was mandated by the government to file a report on
the lessons to be learnt from those events and whether any
person, group, or institution directly or indirectly bears
responsibility for the three-decade conflict.
The international community, particularly the western
nations, have asked Sri Lanka to probe alleged human rights
violations during the final stages of the ethnic conflict.
The LLRC held its first sittings on August 11, 2010. In
November 2010, President Rajapaksa extended its mandate till
May 15, 2011.
A three-member UN panel headed by Marzuki Darusman called
for an international probe into alleged war crimes during the
civil war.
The Sri Lankan government has rejected the UN report as
"fundamentally flawed" and "based on patently biased material,
which is presented without any verification."
The LTTE, which was crushed by the government forces,
had launched an armed struggle to create an independent
homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamils, alleging discrimination at
the hands of the ethnic Sinhalese majority.
PTI
