Sri Lanka killings worry UN's Ban Ki-moon

Colombo, June 5: United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon has voiced deep concern about the safety of aid workers in Sri Lanka after the murder of two Red Cross volunteers, his office said, as Japan's peace envoy flew to the war-battered island.

Two Tamil Sri Lanka Red Cross volunteers were taken away by men who identified themselves as policemen from a train station in Colombo on Friday and their corpses were found dumped outside the capital two days later.

''The secretary-general is deeply concerned about the security of civilians and aid workers in Sri Lanka and reminds all parties in the country that aid workers have a right to protection at all times,'' Ban's office said in a statement.

Rights groups have reported hundreds of abductions and disappearances in recent months after the military and separatist Tigers resumed a two-decade civil war in which nearly 70,000 people have been killed since 1983.

Nordic truce monitors have blamed state security forces for the execution-style murder of 17 local staff of aid agency Action Contre la Faim in the island's east last year, the worst attack on humanitarian workers since a 2003 suicide bombing at the UN headquarters in Baghdad killed 22 UN staff.

''(Ban) reminds the government of their obligation to investigate the murders of 17 aid workers from Action Contre La Faim,'' the statement added.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's office said on Monday that the Red Cross volunteer murders were an attempt to damage his and the government's reputation ahead of a meeting with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva later this month.

False Abductions?

Police deny any involvement in the killings, which were discovered after Rajapaksa said most complaints about abductions - many of which are levelled at state security forces - were false.

Rajapaksa has ordered an investigation into the deaths, his office said. The international community has voiced repeated concerns about rights abuses blamed on elements of the Sri Lankan military and the Tigers.

Yasushi Akashi, the peace envoy of Japan - Sri Lanka's chief financial donor - flies to the island today for a five-day visit to meet Rajapaksa, government officials and civil society leaders. He also plans to visit camps housing thousands of internally displaced in the restive east on Thursday.

Japan played down any hopes of a breakthrough.

''The possibilities are very low. This time it is a very difficult situation,'' said Hideaki Hatanaka, first political secretary at Japan's embassy in Colombo.

Akashi would not visit the Tigers in their northern stronghold of Kilinochchi because of security concerns, he added.

However, he would try to push forward an initiative to forge a cross-party consensus devolution proposal to and a conflict that has killed an estimated 4,500 people since last year alone.

Akashi's visit follows several weeks of deadly land and sea battles, air strikes and roadside bomb ambushes.

The government has vowed to destroy the Tigers militarily, the rebels say they will fight until they have won a separate state, but analysts see no clear winner on the horizon and say the conflict could rumble on for years.

Reuters

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