Members of the UN Security Council agree there is no point in punishing Sri Lanka by withholding a US$1.9 billion IMF loan or other steps, the council’s president said on Thursday.
“I have not heard anyone suggesting that,” Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, president of the 15-nation council, told reporters after an informal session on Sri Lanka.
Asked if all members of the council agreed that penalties such as withholding the loan were unnecessary, Heller said: “Absolutely.”
US officials said on Wednesday Washington was trying to delay the loan to pressure the government to do more to help tens of thousands of civilians caught in the fighting between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.
But Sri Lanka’s central bank said on Thursday that there was no delay in its application for the loan and negotiations were in the final stages.
British Ambassador John Sawers said London agreed that punishing Sri Lanka did not belong on the agenda.
“We’re not in the job of penalizing the government of Sri Lanka,” Sawers said. “We want to help the government of Sri Lanka to address this problem. I just wish that the government ... was more open to the offers of help that have been extended to it.”
UN humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes briefed the council on his trip to Sri Lanka, telling them that he hoped the government would finally live up to its repeated promises to stop using heavy artillery in the conflict zone, where UN officials estimate some 50,000 people are trapped.
It is the last redoubt of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who have been fighting a 25-year war with the government for a separate ethnic Tamil homeland.
In remarks prepared for the press, Heller said the council repeated its calls on the government not to shell the conflict zone and urged the Tigers to stop using the civilians as human shields and lay down their weapons.
Sri Lankan Ambassador H.M.G.S. Palihakkara said his government had assured him it was not using heavy artillery against the tiny strip of land where the civilians are.
But US Ambassador Susan Rice made clear Washington had doubts about the government’s denials.
“Despite the government of Sri Lanka’s promise to suspend combat operations, most accounts indicate that shelling into the conflict zone continues,” she said in remarks prepared for delivery at the closed-door meeting.
“Very credible reports also indicate that the Tamil Tigers are using civilians as human shields, and have, in some cases, shot at civilians trying to leave the conflict area,” she said.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the