UNP calls for MoU with govt. to overcome US resolution

 The UNP said yesterday that it was ready to even enter into an agreement, with the Rajapaksa government, with a view to helping it end the repeated humiliation and insults that Sri Lanka was being subjected to on the international stage.UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, addressing the media in Colombo, said that their criticism of the ruling party was based purely in the interest of the country, but had been rejected time and again on the basis of being unpatriotic.


The intense pressure that had built up against the Rajapaksa regime at the UNHRC had vindicated the stand they had taken. Sri Lanka’s credibility was at stake and urgent measures were required to save it from being branded a "Pariah State", he noted.

"We are willing to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the government to assist in implementing its very own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission recomendations", the UNP leader said adding that they were also prepared to support the resolution of the long drawn out ethnic issue.Wickremesinghe observed that the US resolution on accountability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka, which was scheduled to be taken up at the UNHRC in Geneva on March 21,

was certain to succeed since many of the countries that had voted against the first resolution last year were no longer in the 47-member human rights body.

"We do not want the country and its people to get into trouble. The way out was for the LLRC recommendations to be implemented or the human rights allegations be investigated either under military or civil law," he said.

The UNP leader also called for the full implementation of the 13th Amendment and northern provincial elections be held by July the latest.

The government needs to take the opposition into confidence and treat the UNHRC crisis as a national issue, he noted.