Sri
Lanka
& Kohona
Gun for UN
Budget Post
While Press
Threatened
By
Matthew
Russell Lee,
Exclusive
UNITED
NATIONS,
July 9 --
Earlier this
year, after a
backroom
process
involving
Saudi Arabia,
the Asia
Group at
the UN
nominated Sri
Lanka
for its seat
on Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon's
Senior
Advisory Group
on
Peacekeeping
Operations.
Then
Sri
Lanka named as
its
representative
to SAG General
Shavendra
Silva,
whose
battalion is
depicted in
Ban's own
experts'
report on Sri
Lanka
as engaged in
war crimes in
May 2009.
Now,
Inner
City Press has
exclusively
learned, Sri
Lanka is
gaining the
Asia Group
nomination to
head the UN's
Fifth (Budget)
Committee, in
the person of
Palitha
Kohona, who
also figures
in Ban
Ki-moon's
report and
had a
described role
in luring
surrenderees
out, where
they were
killed.
Beyond
Inner
City Press'
reporting on
Silva and
Kohona, see
this profile
of
Kohona and war
crimes in the
Sidney Morning
Herald in
Australia,
where Kohona
is also a
citizen, click
here to view.
While
Sri
Lanka has
circled the
wagons and
maintains the
Silva is on
the
SAG,
chairperson
Louise
Frechette has
ruled he
cannot
participate.
Silva
has been
conveniently
"out of town"
during at
least
the last two
sets of
two-day
meetings of
the SAG.
This would not
be
acceptable on
the Fifth
Committee.
Questions
are
beginning to
arise if this
is now the
right person
to head the
UN's
budget
committee.
Projects in
the UK led to
a recent
cancellation
of
a speech with
the Queen by
Sri Lankan
president
Mahinda
Rajapaksa.
Over
this
past weekend,
his brother Gotabaya
Rajapaksa the
defense
minister
shouted as an
investigative
journalist,
"the people
will kill you!"
Inner City
Press asked
Ban's deputy
spokesman
about it, and
was told that
of course Ban
hasn't heard
of it. Fifth
Committee here
we come? Watch
this site.
, 
