Sri Lanka Will Deny Entry To UN Investigators To Probe War Crimes: President

UN investigators will not be granted visas by Sri Lanka to probe war crimes allegedly committed during the island's decades-long separatist conflict, President Mahinda Rajapakse said on Tuesday.

"We will not allow them into the country," said Rajapakse, who is under international pressure to cooperate with the UN-mandated investigation. Speaking for the first time on the issue, he stated that UN investigators will not be allowed into the country, effectively barring them from face-to-face access to Sri Lankans wanting to testify in the probe.

In March, the UN Human Rights Council voted to probe allegations that the military killed 40,000 civilians in the final months of the separatist war, which ended in 2009, Agence France-Presse reported. But Sri Lanka has refused to accept the responsibility of the blame.

However, Rajapakse said that his government was cooperating with all other UN agencies. "We are saying that we do not accept it (the probe). We are against it," he told Colombo-based foreign correspondents at his official residence. "But when it comes to other UN agencies, we are always ready to fully cooperate and fully engage with them," he said.

After ending a prolonged separatist war that pitted ethnic minority Tamil rebels and the largely Sinhalese army in a drawn out ethnic war, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other leaders have urged Colombo to cooperate with the UNHRC, according to AFP.

Earlier this month, outgoing UN rights chief Navi Pillay suggested that her investigators looking into allegations of mass killings may not have to travel to Sri Lanka at all. She said there was a "wealth of information" outside the country.

"Colombo insists that its troops did not commit war crimes while crushing the Tamil Tiger rebel movement at the end of a conflict which stretched for more than three decades and claimed more than 100,000 lives," AFP reported.

Meanwhile, Rajapakse's government has also been accused by Pillay of becoming authoritarian and warned that rights defenders and journalists were at risk in the country.

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