by Zacki Jabbar-February 10, 2014, 12:00 pmSenior Vice President of the UNP Lakshman Kiriella MP, yesterday challenged Ministers Prof. G. L. Peiris and Mahinda Samarasinghe for a public debate on the government’s foreign policy.
Kirielle told The Island that if the two ministers accepted his challenge, he would prove that the Rajapaksa regime was facing the prospect of a third successive UNHRC resolution against it due its own folly and had no one to blame but itself. "A series of blunders has led to the country being crucified at international forums. It all began shortly after the war with the LTTE ended on May 19, 2009. Our representative at the UN gave an undertaking that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution would be implemented in full. Subsequently, President Mahinda Rajapaksa went a step further and assured India that 13A Plus would be granted to the North and East."
Thereafter the government entered into an MoU with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon undertaking to conduct an independent and credible domestic inquiry into the allegations of war crimes against the security forces and the LTTE, he noted.
More recently External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris had, in a written communication to Ban Ki-moon, said, "My President sees a seamless connectivity between the Darussman Report and the LRRC’s recommendations", the MP said, adding that he could cite many other instances of the Rajapaksa regime’s flawed foreign policy, if Peiris and Samarasinghe were willing to debate him.
Kirielle said that the majority of Sri Lanka’s diplomats abroad had been picked from outside the foreign service and were badly lacking in the skills, knowledge and experience that such postings required. "If they had done the job expected of them, there would have been no need for ministers and special envoys to be flying around the world."
