Sri Lanka donor list headed by Japan, Russia, China

Lanka Business Online
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Sri Lanka has received the most aid commitments from Japan in the first four months of 2010 with 421.8 million US dollars, Russia came a surprise second with 300 million US dollars and China third, official data showed.In 2009 China became the top country to commit aid to Sri Lanka lining up 1.2 billion US dollars out of 2.2 billion US dollars offered by lending agencies and donor countries to the island.

In the first four months of April China had committed 293.5 million US dollars with 190 million US dollars for an airport in Sri Lanka's south and 102 million US dollars for rolling stock for Sri Lanka railways.

Russia's 300 million US dollars is a credit line. Media reports have said earlier the Russian loan was for military hardware and repairs.

The World Bank had committed 179 million US dollars for rural roads and rehabilitation of former war torn areas, the finance ministry report said.

Iran had also committed 111 million US dollars to expand power distribution.

Among actual disbursements, Japan again led the list with 121.5 million US dollars of which 6.5 million US dollars were grants.

China gave 110.9 million US dollars. The Asian Development Bank gave 74.7 million US dollars of which 9.4 million US dollars were grants.

The World Bank disbursed 41.0 million US dollars of which 4.7 million were grants. The European Commission gave 3.7 million US dollars in grants and UN agencies 1.5 million.

The Netherlands disbursed 24.1 million US dollars and France 19.5 million US dollars.

© Lanka Business Online

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Sri Lanka: National Trade Union Centre slams govt budget

The Island
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The National Trade Union Centre (NTUC) in a statement issued on the Budget presented in Parliament on Tuesday, said it was one which had taken away many things from the people instead of providing them with relief.

It said prices of several essential items had been jacked up before the budget thereby heaping a heavy burden on the working class and what the government had presented on Tuesday was only an expenditure report for the next six months of the year.

The working class would not tolerate that kind of approach, the NTUC said.

The NTUC said nothing had been said in the Budget about the Rs. 2,500 salary hike which was mostly expected by those who had voted for the

President and the Government. "It was those people who had voted for the President and the Government and they were cheated, the NTUC said.

The statement signed by NTUC President former JVP MP Lal Kantha urged the working class to be ready for trade union action.

© The Island

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UN on alert over minister's threat

Daily Mirror Online
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The United Nations says its security officials are monitoring comments made by government Minister Wimal Weerawansa who had today urged the public to surround the UN office in Colombo and hold its staff hostage until moves by the UN to appoint a panel on Sri Lanka is dropped.

When asked by a journalist from Innercitypress at a press briefing at the UN in New York a short while ago to respond to the comments made by Weerawansa as appearing on Daily Mirror online today, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said the UN had contacted the Sri Lankan government over the article and the government has assured the UN that the comments made by Weerawansa was his “individual opinion”.

“Our security officials are aware of these remarks and they will check if this official was quoted correctly and what he meant by that. The government of Sri Lanka has assured us that this was an individual’s opinion and not their policy,” the UN spokesman said.

The UN spokesman also said that New York had contacted the UN office in Colombo to verify the report and added that at the moment there was no immediate threat as a result of the comments made by the government Minister.

He however noted that in general the UN does not condone or accept threats made on UN staff anywhere be it by officials or anyone else.

© Daily Mirror

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Sri Lanka could lose trade concessions in EU spat

By Bate Felix | Reuters
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The European Union's executive wrote to Colombo on June 17, requesting the government fully comply with and implement provisions of international human rights agreements and the United Nations convention against torture.

For more than a year Sri Lanka has defied Western pressure over accountability for potential war crimes and human rights violations in the last stages of its quarter-century war with the separatist Tamil Tigers, which it won in May 2009.

"The Commission would be grateful to receive from your government, by July 1, a letter containing a firm undertaking to address by the end of the year, the principle outstanding issues," said the letter, seen by Reuters.

"Over the longer term, the European Commission looks forward to addressing the full range of human rights issues with the government of Sri Lanka," it said.

The letter, signed by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, had urged Sri Lanka to lift wartime emergency laws that grant the government wide powers of arrest.

Sri Lankan officials rejected the request from the 27-nation EU, saying demands for accountability were fuelled by supporters of the Tamil Tigers.

"To suggest that any decision by the EU in respect of GSP+ (trade concessions) and Sri Lanka is politically motivated and to link it to the elections of this year is entirely false," said John Clancy, the European Commission's trade spokesman.

"The government of Sri Lanka is very well aware that this is a legal process that began several years ago and to suggest otherwise is simply misleading," he said.

DEADLINE LOOMS

As the July 1 reply deadline looms, the European Union has warned that Sri Lanka risks losing access from Aug. 15 to its biggest export market if it fails to comply.

In February, EU states said they would temporarily withdraw preferential tariff benefits to Sri Lanka under the Generalised System of Preferences Plus (GSP+) scheme because of concerns about Sri Lanka's human rights record.

The potential loss, worth about 100 million euros ($122 million) annually in exports, would be a blow to Sri Lanka as the country is focused on resurrecting its $42 billion economy.

"We were not prepared to obtain these concessions at any cost. That's not the attitude of a self-respecting government," Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris said.

Peiris had said Colombo would not reply to the EU's letter.

© Reuters

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UN defends Sri Lankan civil war panel

By James Reinl | The National
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The UN has defended the creation of a controversial three-person panel to probe rights violations committed during the endgame to Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war, which was dismissed by officials in Colombo as “totally unnecessary”.

This month, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, made a long-awaited decision to appoint experts to advise him on “accountability issues” relating to abuses committed last year during the violent end to almost three decades of conflict.

Sri Lankan nationalists protested the move noisily this week, while government officials in Colombo rejected the UN’s “unwarranted and uncalled for” intervention and said they will refuse the experts visas to enter the South Asian island.

Speaking with The National, Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the UN chief, rejected claims that the world body was trespassing on Sri Lankan sovereignty and insisted that Mr Ban was not exceeding his powers by creating the panel.

“The secretary general has all the authority he needs to name a panel of advisers,” Mr Haq said.

“Whereas commissions of inquiry have normally required a mandate, the panel of experts for Sri Lanka is an advisory panel limited to advise the secretary general.

“It is not a fact-finding or investigative body that would determine the facts or scope of the alleged violations in Sri Lanka, and nor is it intended to make visits to Sri Lanka that would require the consent of the government.”

The defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in mid-May last year ended a conflict that claimed the lives of 100,000 people since rebels began fighting for an independent homeland in 1983. Rights groups are pressing for accountability for thousands of civilian deaths in the final months of the conflict, when government forces shelled a “no-fire zone” while encircling the rebel’s final stronghold on a sandy strip of north-eastern Sri Lanka.

The Tigers were accused of using child soldiers and human shields among myriad violations, but since their defeat by Sri Lankan security forces, allegations have centred on the military’s excessive use of force during the final offensive.

The UN has repeatedly urged Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to probe abuses but has also been criticised for failing to ratchet up enough pressure against his increasingly gloating and nationalistic government.

The president’s own probe – a Commission on Lessons Learned and Reconciliation – was announced in May, but it is widely regarded as lacking legal powers. Even Mr Ban’s panel is seen as an attempt to increase political pressure on Mr Rajapaksa rather than uncover evidence of violations.

Marzuki Darusman, a former attorney general of Indonesia, will head the panel, supported Yasmin Sooka, who served on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Steven Ratner, a professor specialising in international law at the University of Michigan Law School. The panel is expected to wrap up its responsibilities within four months.

Members will examine the “modalities, applicable international standards and comparative experience with regard to accountability processes, taking into account the nature and scope of any alleged violations in Sri Lanka”, said a UN statement.

UN spokesman Mr Haq said this week investigators will focus on the final stages of the conflict, when abuse allegations centre on the government’s excessive military force causing the deaths of thousands of Tamil civilians.

“The conflict ran for decades, and during that period many atrocities took place,” said Mr Haq. “While there is a legitimate need for a through inquiry into the entire conflict, it was felt that as a first step it would be necessary and practical for the secretary general’s panel to focus on the final stages of the war.

“During that time, grave violations of humanitarian and human-rights law by both sides are alleged to have taken place despite strident appeals and warnings from the international community for the protection of civilians.”

© The National

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