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Lanka ducks war crimes probe

UN's Human Rights Council adopts resolution praising war outcome

AFP, Colombo
Sri Lanka celebrated a major diplomatic victory' yesterday after managing to torpedo Western demands for a probe into alleged war crimes committed during the offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels.
A little more than a week after government troops defeated the separatist army, the island's diplomats managed to lobby Asian support and commandeer a special session of the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The Council session, called because of alarm over the high number of civilian casualties as well as the island's treatment of displaced Tamil civilians, ended Wednesday with a resolution praising the outcome of the war.
"This is a strong endorsement of our president's efforts to rout terrorism, and the successful handling of the world's biggest hostage crisis." Sri Lanka's Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said.
Although the Tamil Tigers were accused of holding tens of thousands of Tamil civilians as human shields, government
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troops were alleged to have subjected rebel held areas packed with civilians to intense, indiscriminate shelling.
But Samarasinghe dismissed Western criticism as "double standards."
"They are opposed to the independent action we took to counter and defeat, but they are silent about what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and in Gaza," Samarasinghe said.
"This final result shows that Sri Lanka stands on top in terms of wide support across the globe," Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said. "This constitutes a major achievement in terms of internationalrelations."
The UN estimates that more than 7,000 civilians were killed in the first four months of this year alone.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay had told the Council there was credible evidence that both Sri Lankan forces and the defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) grossly violated international humanitarianlaws.
But Sri l.anka -- backed by Asian countries including China, India and Pakistan -managed to push through its own resolution.
rhe text condemns only the Tamil Tigers, and "welcomes... the liberation by the government of Sri Lanka of tens of thousands of its citizens that were kept by the LTTE against their will as hostages."
It was adopted with 29 coun -tries voting for, 12 rejecting and six abstaining from the vote --effectively handing the island's hawkish government a diplomatic seal of approval for its offensive.
Rights groups and Western diplomats were furious.
"The Human Rights Council missed the opportunity to send a message” to human rights violators, said a Canadian diplomat in Geneva.
Switzerland also criticised the "significant gaps" in the text, including a failure to make explicit reference to granting humanitarian groups full access to up to 300,000 dis-placedTamils.
Ethnic Tamils displaced by the fighting are now being held in camps ringed by barbed wire and security forces, who say they need to weed out former , rebel fighters disguised as civilians.
"The Human Rights Council did not even express its concern for the hundreds of thousands of people facing indefinite detention in government camps," said Juliette de Rivero, Geneva advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.
"It is deeply disappointing that a majority of the Human Rights Council decided to focus on praising a government whose forces have been respon -sible for the repeated indiscrim -inate shellingofcivilians."