International community’s patience with Sri Lanka will wear thin, US warns
Thursday, 5 December 2013 00:00
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If Sri Lanka doesn’t make meaningful progress in addressing the accountability issues, the patience of the international community on Sri Lanka will start to wear thin, the United States warned Tuesday.
Speaking to the media at a press briefing Tuesday in Washington, the newly appointed Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian affairs Nisha Desai Biswal urged Sri Lanka to take some “concrete steps” to address the issue of human rights, accountability and reconciliation process.
“I think that the patience of the international community, if real progress is not seen, particularly on issues of accountability, that patience will start to wear thin,” Biswal said responding to a media query on whether the US supports the British Prime Minister’s March 2014 deadline for Sri Lanka to make progress on accountability issues of alleged war crimes.
“The United States and really all of our friends across the international community have underscored the need for Sri Lanka to make progress on issues of reconciliation, on issues of accountability, and on issues of human rights, ongoing concerns about the political space and human rights in the country,” the Assistant Secretary said.
She said the US is committed to working with “our friends in Sri Lanka” to see that progress adding that the US expects Sri Lanka to address these issues through its own processes.
“We urge our friends in Sri Lanka to use the opportunity to show some concrete steps that their own processes have yielded. Through the LLRC, there are a set of recommendations. I think that those are exactly the points that we’d like to see progress on and we’d encourage them to do that,” Biswal said.
