Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath and Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari watch as Finance Minister P Chidambaram addresses a press conference in New Delhi yesterday.
AFP/New Delhi
India promised yesterday to push for a “strong” UN resolution urging Sri Lanka to investigate alleged war crimes, a day after the issue caused a split in the ruling coalition.
The US is drafting a resolution against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva which is expected to be voted today and is bound to anger Colombo.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram said India would propose amendments to the draft resolution being negotiated, but he denied that India was trying to water it down - as was claimed in some media reports.
“India’s position has always been and remains that the UNHRC should adopt a strong resolution that would send a resolute message to Sri Lanka and goad Sri Lanka to accept an independent and credible investigation,” Chidambaram said.
India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance was rocked on Tuesday by the pullout of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, which accused the government of being too soft and demanded that the resolution refer to the “genocide” of ethnic Tamils.
International rights groups estimate that 40,000 civilians died in the final months of fighting when government troops launched an onslaught on separatists fighting for a Tamil homeland.
Sri Lanka has denied that its forces killed civilians and has resisted calls from the UN and Western powers for an independent international investigation into the conduct of its army.
Sri Lanka’s top general, who led the campaign against the Tamil Tiger rebels, said on Tuesday the government should accept a probe but he rejected any suggestion of genocide.
“Some people have questions. Some people have doubts. Some people want to know what happened,” Sarath Fonseka, who has become a top opponent of President Mahinda Rajapakse, told the Foreign Correspondents’ Association.
Thousands of Tamils held protests in Tamil Nadu yesterday as well as in the commercial capital Mumbai, holding up pictures of alleged victims of Sri Lankan soldiers.
India has also postponed scheduled defence co-operation talks with Sri Lanka this month, officials said.
In another move likely to deepen the discord, Chidambaram stressed that the Indian government was consulting other parties about a parliamentary resolution which would also call on Sri Lanka to investigate the alleged war crimes.
DMK, AIADMK isolated at meeting
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam parties were virtually isolated yesterday after all other parties opposed any move to condemn Sri Lanka in Indian parliament over rights abuses. A senior leader said almost all other parties came out against any denunciation of Sri Lanka, an issue that has affected parliament’s functioning in recent days. “Most parties opposed the proposed resolution, and even the Congress did not suggest moving the resolution in parliament,” the leader said after the one-and-a-half-hour meeting. Only the DMK and AIADMK favoured the resolution, he said. Congress leader and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath later said: “We discussed ways to end the parliament impasse. We could not arrive at a solution. No consensus emerged.” The Samajwadi Party (SP) fiercely opposed the move to pass a resolution targeting a specific country. “It is not proper to bring a resolution against Sri Lanka in parliament,” Rewati Raman Singh told reporters.