UN official to send advisor to Lanka on child abuse reports

United Nations, June 28 (UNI) Noting that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are continuing to recruit and use child soldiers in Sri Lanka, the United Nations Special Representative for Children affected by armed conflict has said she is appointing a Special Advisor to undertake a fact-finding mission to the island nation.

The LTTE militant group ''continues to recruit and use child soldiers and the office has also received reports that the Karuna faction has abducted and recruited children under the age of eighteen,'' Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Representative said yesterday.

''Besides recruitment of child soldiers, there are also allegations of other grave violations against children by all parties to the conflict,'' she added, expressing deep concern about the deteriorating situation in Sri Lanka, where separatists and government forces have been fighting for two decades.

Ms Coomaraswamy has appointed Ambassador Alan Rock of Canada as Special Advisor to conduct the fact-finding mission, according to a UN statement, which added the dates would be finalised after consultation with the Sri Lankan government, UN partners and others.

Ambassador Rock was the Canadian envoy to the United Nations from 2004 to June 2006. During this period, he was involved in setting up the UN Human Rights Council and the Peacebuilding Commission.

Increasing violence in Sri Lanka has led to repeated calls by Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other high-level UN officials for both sides to return to the negotiating table. On Monday, in response to the killing of four people in a suicide bomb attack, Mr Annan said that ''no cause can justify such acts of violence.'' An attack on a bus on June 15 reportedly killed 62 civilians and injured more than 40 others, including school children, while around mid-May, 13 Tamil civilians were killed on the island of Keyts in Jaffna, including an infant and a young child. There have also been other recent incidents despite a ceasefire agreement of February 2002 aimed at ending the fighting between the Government and separatist forces that has claimed some 60,000 lives.

LTTE got frightened that after Ms Coomaraswamy's appointment to the post, more international attention would be focused to their recruitment of children for military purposes.

As Ms Coomaraswamy was a close associate of Dr Neelan Thiruchelvam, who was murdered by them, the Tigers were also scared that the details about that murder too would come to international focus.

UNI XC SHB HS1744