Colombo: Amid mounting pressure from the
western nations on Sri Lanka to investigate alleged war crimes
during the ethnic conflict, the government today said the
politically motivated campaign to undermine the sovereignty of
the country will fail as its friends would stand by it.
Foreign Minister G L Peiris underlined that Sri Lanka
had not been internationally isolated in the back drop of the
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon`s expert panel report which
accused Colombo of war crimes and called for a probe.
"There are countries that empathise with us," Peiris
said referring to a show of support Sri Lanka secured from
Russia and China, the two prominent members of the powerful UN
Security Council.
The foreign minister underlined that the politically
motivated campaign to undermine the sovereignty of the country
will fail and its friends would stand by it.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa had one-to-one meetings
with his Chinese and Russian counterpart, Hu Jintao and the
Dmtry Medvedev, in Russia on the sidelines of the
International Economic Forum in St Petersburg last week.
"China said they respect the sovereignty of Sri Lanka
and oppose external forces intervening in Sri Lanka," Peiris
said on Rajapksa`s meeting with the Chinese President Hu.
Peiris said Russian President Medvedev told Rajapaksa
that both his country and Sri Lanka had equally suffered from
terrorism and were aware of the pain and destruction of it.
Sri Lanka has dubbed the UN panel report which called
for a probe to examins alleged war crimes during the last
phase of the civil war with the LTTE as a western ploy to halt
the country`s progress since the end of the over three
decades old conflict in May 2009.
Colombo has accused the Western countries of using the
UN mechanism as a tool against Sri Lanka.
PTI
