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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lkdood" data-source="post: 7729019" data-attributes="member: 92282">Sri Lanka will ban visits by the three-member United Nations panel  investigating alleged human rights abuses in the final months of the  island's civil war, a senior minister said Thursday.Troops  finally wiped out the separatist Tamil Tiger guerrillas in May last year  after decades of ethnic bloodshed, and the government has denied  repeated allegations that thousands of civilians were killed in the  fighting."We will not issue them with visas. We will not allow  them into this country," External Affairs Minister Gamini Lakshman  Peiris told reporters.UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's  appointment on Tuesday of the panel to advise on any violations of  international human rights was "totally unnecessary," Peiris said.He  said Sri Lanka had announced its own commission into the end of the war  and post-conflict ethnic reconciliation."We feel the panel is an  unnecessary interference. The government should be given a free space  to make its own findings," he said.The UN panel was set up after  international pressure for an independent probe into allegations that  Tamil civilians were killed by government troops and that surrendering  rebels were executed in cold blood.It will be chaired by Marzuki  Darusman from Indonesia, the UN's special envoy for North Korea, and  hopes to complete its work in four months.When the panel was  named, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky emphasised it had a mostly  consultative role, and that "primary responsibility for investigating  rests with the authorities of Sri Lanka".However many diplomats  see the UN's move as a precursor to a full-blown war crimes  investigationThe UN itself has said that at least 7,000 Tamil  civilians perished in the first four months of 2009 before the  government secured final victory over the Tigers -- who as recently as  2006 controlled one-third of the island.The Brussels-based  International Crisis Group said last month the Sri Lankan government had  killed thousands of its civilians by shelling "no-fire zones" in the  last months of the war.The ICG said the military encouraged  hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians to move into  government-declared "no-fire zones" and then subjected them to "repeated  and increasingly intense artillery and mortar barrages.""This  continued through May despite the government and security forces knowing  the size and location of the civilian population and scale of civilian  casualties," the ICG reported.The group said it had collected  eyewitness statements as well as hundreds of photographs, videos,  satellite images, electronic communications and documents from multiple  sources to support the charges.Sri Lanka is extremely sensitive  about criticism of its hardline war policy, which it views as having  successfully brought peace to the island.President Mahinda  Rajapakse has always rejected calls for an independent probe and in  March warned Ban that he would take "appropriate action" if a UN panel  was set up.Sri Lanka managed to stave off censure at the UN  Security Council last year thanks to the support of Russia and China,  close allies and key suppliers of military hardware to the island.The  government last week held official celebrations to mark the defeat of  the Tamil Tigers defeat, with Rajapakse delivering a speech insisting  that his soldiers did not kill a single civilian.<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jJCj9xD3BW-E_0CcPaMqh4tJvlOw" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.google.com/hostednews/img/afp_logo.gif" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a></blockquote>

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