LTTE to assist UN panel

30 June 2010 05:41 am

The LTTE international network has offered to co-operate with the UN panel appointed by UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon to advice him on Sri Lanka and also urged the committee to protect witnesses who come forward to testify.

The LTTE also urged the panel to eventually publish its findings in order to ensure complete transparency, to help launch a needed public discourse about the violations of international law and to undertake the necessary remedial measures to ensure that this shall never happen again.

“We therefore offer our full cooperation to the UN's panel of investigators and we are willing to provide a large number of first-hand evidence to aid the panel. Despite the panel’s declaration not to visit the country, we call the UN to independently and freely gather first-hand accounts about the atrocities committed from the very population of the Vanni region, who will be able to depict the reality of the massacres,” US based LTTE activist and a member of the LTTE Transnational Government Visvanathan Rudrakumarn said in an email.

The LTTE however raised concern regarding the length of the investigation saying the scheduled four month period of investigation by a small panel of three seems to be too short to guarantee a just evaluation of the large scale of crimes committed last year.

“We therefore request the UN to extend its period of investigation to be able to draw an adequate report to a situation that is often called as the worst contemporary form of violation of international law,” Visvanathan Rudrakumarn said. (Daily Mirror online)