US pleased to get India's support in UN showdown with Sri Lanka

New York: US officials don’t want to count their chickens before they’re hatched. Still, they are incredibly pleased that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came out on Monday and told parliament that India was “inclined” to back a US-sponsored UN resolution asking Sri Lanka to investigate if their armed forces committed atrocities against the Tamil Tigers at the climax of the country’s 26-year civil war. India has a working relationship with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government, so Singh has baulked at the idea of siding with Britain and the US in a bitter showdown with Sri Lanka. However, Singh’s ruling coalition is under pressure from political parties in Tamil Nadu, including its second- largest ally, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), to support the resolution. The DMK has threatened to pull out its ministers from the UPA if the government doesn’t back the international resolution rebuking Sri Lanka over war crimes. [caption id=“attachment_249781” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The PM  came out on Monday and told parliament that India was “inclined” to back a US-sponsored UN resolution asking Sri Lanka. PTI”]  [/caption] “We hope that the government of Sri Lanka recognises the critical importance of this issue and acts decisively” Singh said in parliament. “We don’t yet have the final text of the resolution. However, we are inclined to vote in favour of the resolution.” The US is very keen on India’s support on this issue since it is a key regional player. The US media said that building diplomatic consensus for the resolution has been a struggle for America given that the abuses occurred three years ago and isn’t part of an ongoing crisis. The US is planning to bring its resolution before the United Nations Human Rights Council as early as this week and it has angered Sri Lanka, which claims that the resolution could stir separatism. “We don’t think of this as a symbolic vote,” Eileen Donahoe, US ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, told The Wall Street Journal. “We see this as a meaningful effort to encourage the Sri Lankan government to take credible steps…We fear the government of Sri Lanka might fail to take those credible steps.” The motion, if successful, won’t legally bind the Sri Lankan government to any policy. Donahoe said an earlier version of the resolution had sought an action plan from Sri Lanka by June, but as tabled now, the resolution calls for the UN Human Rights Commissioner to report to the council a year from now on the steps Sri Lanka has taken. A United Nations report released in April 2011 said the military and rebel Tamil Tigers may have committed serious violations of international law in the final stages of the conflict, causing as many as 40,000 civilian deaths. Experts say thousands of people may have been killed, largely through shell fire by Sri Lankan government troops. Sri Lanka has dismissed the US claims and a large team of Sri Lankan officials and diplomats are lobbying countries to oppose any resolution, saying such a move would damage reconciliation efforts. “We feel the US is being intrusive,” Bandula Jayasekara, a spokesman for Rajapaksa told the Journal. “Nobody likes pressure being brought unnecessarily without giving us time and space for reconciliation.”