International   

Huge challenges in Sri Lanka: Ban

COLOMBO: Calling for an end to “old enmities,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a gathering of internally displaced persons at a government welfare village in Vavuniya in the north that he would mobilise U.N. agencies and international non-governmental organisations to help with the resettlement. He was on a 24-hour visit for a firsthand assessment of the post-war situation in Sri Lanka

Mr. Ban, who arrived here late on Friday night, travelled on Saturday to one of the government-run camps for the displaced in the wartorn north and was subsequently flown to the conflict zone by the military to give him glimpses from the air of the devastation in the last phase of the Eelam IV.

Later in the evening, he flew to Kandy town and met President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The agenda at the meeting focused on the need to give U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organisations immediate and unhindered access to all areas where there are displaced people, fast-track the screening and processing of refugees as quickly as possible immediate steps to initiate a political process of dialogue, accommodation and reconciliation.

At a news conference after his meeting with Mr. Rajapaksa, Mr. Ban said the President told him that his government had prepared a plan for resettlement of the nearly 3,00,000 war displaced civilians within six months. It informed him the steps taken to initiate a political dialogue for a solution acceptable to all parties to the ethnic conflict. The displaced civilians are housed in government “welfare villages” located in the districts of Vavuniya, Mannar and Jaffna in the war torn north.

A statement by the President’s Secretariat said responding to the Secretary-General’s observation that progress on all these areas must proceed parallel and with the least delay, Mr. Rajapaksa said these areas had already been recognised as those needing the highest priority, and that work was already in place to address them. Mr. Ban was flown by the Air Force over the conflict zone where the military and the LTTE were engaged in pitched battles in the last phases of the war that ended on Monday morning with the entire top brass of the LTTE including its chief Velupillai Prabakaran killed.

“I’m very moved after what I have seen. I’ve seen so many wounded,” he told the journalists accompanying him after spending 20 minutes walking through the camp.

“There are huge challenges that can only be overcome by strong support from the international community,” said Mr. Ban.

Just hours before Mr. Ban’s arrival, Mr. Rajapaksa dismissed charges of human rights violations and the demand from a section of the international civil society for an impartial investigation into the alleged excesses. Earlier in the day at Kandy, Mahanayakas of Malwatta and Asgiriya chapters conferred on Mr. Rajapaksa the honorary title “Vishva Keerthi Sri Thri Sinhaladheeshawara” (the highest ever honorary title in the Buddhist tradition) at the historic Kandy “Magul Maduwa” (Royal Auditorium).

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Karachi’s ethnic faultlines widen
Nepal elected Premier unopposed
Maoists see foreign hand
The man who blew the whistle in U.K.
Death under suicide law
Huge challenges in Sri Lanka: Ban
Obama congratulates Manmohan
26/11 attack: indictment of Pakistanis put off

Copyright © 2009, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu