Sri Lanka says domestic mechanism to probe war crimes to be in place before September

The Sri Lankan government on Wednesday said that it hoped to put in place a domestic mechanism to investigate allegations of war crimes committed during the final stages of the country's 30-year civil war before September.

Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera told journalists in capital Colombo that the government was in the process of working out the contours of the domestic mechanism and hoped to put it in place before the UN Human Rights Council sessions in September.

Sri Lanka's new government won a six-month extension in February this year in the publication of a UN report on alleged war crimes, after UN human rights chief praised its willingness to open the country up to scrutiny.

The UN Human Rights Council voted in March last year, to investigate war crimes in Sri Lanka, saying then President Mahinda Rajapaksa had failed to do so properly.

The new government headed by President Maithripala Sirisena had assured the UN that it would set up a mechanism which would meet international standards to probe the war crimes allegations and anyone found guilty would be charged according to the local laws.

The Sri Lankan military has been accused of committing human rights violations in the final stages of the war against Tamil Tiger rebels which ended in May 2009, including the alleged killings of about 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final weeks of the conflict.

Meanwhile Samaraweera said that the government had achieved a lot in terms of reconciliation since it came to power following the January presidential election but stressed that there was more to achieve.

"The very fact that we managed to introduce civilian administration to the north and east of Sri Lanka was a great leap forward and we are also now in the process of redistributing the lands which were forcibly taken over by the armed forces in the last several years," Samaraweera said. Endi