B. Muralidhar Reddy

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka on Friday said it would be appropriate if the world “desisted from prescribing punitive measures” against the nation to enable it work out its agenda after “defeating terrorism”.

Pointing out the restrictions imposed by the U.S., Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told visiting U.S. Democratic party Congressman Heath Shuler, that Sri Lanka needed wider support on counter terrorism issues.

“He advocated the re-examination of the relevant regulations. Minister Bogollagama, while pointing out the requirement of wider engagement in this area, emphasised that Sri Lanka was not seeking rewards, but an acknowledgement of its success in countering terrorism,” said a Foreign Office statement. Mr. Bogollagama told him that the government had now entered the process of reconstruction of the North and the East and reconciliation.

Separately, the U.N. office here said the government had eased restrictions on its vehicles going in and out of the IDP welfare centres.

U.N. officials and the government had decided on an interim measure whereby agency vehicles — one at a time — had access to Manik Farm. Moreover, U.N. officials were asked to enter Manik Farm without its flag on their vehicles, said U.N. spokesperson Marie Okabe.

Meanwhile, Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) leader V. Anandasangaree, in a letter to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, said a number of elderly persons from the IDP camps had been handed over to people who volunteered to take charge of them.

“There are many still languishing in the camps alone, with no capacity to identify themselves. In this situation I do not hesitate to say that they are gradually dying. A good number of their children and other relations who are doing well and living in far off places and in foreign countries are living in agony, finding it difficult to know their whereabouts. Some who had become deaf do not respond to any call or announcement over the microphone. The difficulty some undergo while waiting to get their food cannot be described in words”.

He further said that last week alone 66 un-identified bodies in a highly decomposed state were buried in a common grave at the Vavuniya Poonthoddam cemetery.