Govt. to hire PR team

By Sulochana Ramiah Mohan  2013-01-31 The government is planning to spend whopping millions to hire reputed Public Relations agencies, to counter the charges levelled against Sri Lanka by the Western powers, at the upcoming sessions of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. A team of professionals and several reputed overseas PR agencies, backed by Sri Lanka's missions abroad, will face the challenges posed by the resolution to be brought against Sri Lanka by the United States at the UNHRC sessions, Ceylon Today learns. "Sri Lanka is pretty much on track to face outside challenges having prepared the groundwork, come what may be the situation in Geneva," said Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs, K. Amunugama. He said, "The US resolution on Sri Lanka would be as tough as last year, but we have done the groundwork, however challenging it would be. A smaller team of professionals, compared to last year, will be present in Geneva. Also, several reputed overseas PR agencies will be present there to campaign for Sri Lanka, backed by our foreign missions. "We are working on the recommendations made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) constantly and have made substantial progress with the support of the committee chief, President's Secretary Lalith Weeratunga and we are set for a strong argument in Geneva," he said. "We knew something would come up in Geneva, but what we did not know was what sort of thing it would be. "The last review was about the implementation of the LLRC recommendations and High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay wanted us to report back on the LLRC progress, which we did. We were expecting a reply from her and we do not know what is in there. But we sensed that anyhow it would be negative and nothing positive in it," he added.