Photograph:www.news.lk

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa called on members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to unite and resist against 'external manipulations' at the 18th SAARC summit this week.

Addressing the summit, being held in Kathmandu, Nepal, Rajapaksa said,

"While SAARC practice has been to abstain from involvement in bilateral issues of a political nature, we must resist external manipulations."

Schools in Jaffna received anonymous letters urging them to commemorate Maaveerar Naal on Thursday, reports Uthayan.

Mano Ganesan, leader of the Democratic People’s Front and former MP, has posted a message of remembrance, ahead of Maaveerar Naal, on his Facebook page.

The United Kingdom has condemned Sri Lanka’s continued refusal to co-operate with a United Nations investigation into mass atrocities, during a debate in the House of Lords on Monday.

Responding to a question on the refusal of the Sri Lankan authorities to grant visas to the United Nations team which was to investigate the atrocities committed, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, Government Whip acting as government spokesperson on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said,

“My Lords, the UK was a sponsor of the resolution of the UN Human Rights Council. We are actively concerned in this issue. We are not at all happy about the refusal of the Sri Lankan authorities to co-operate with the attempts to have an external inquiry, because of our concerns that the internal inquiry’s recommendations have not yet been implemented”.

Lord Wallace went on to say that the UK has “actively made our position clear to the Sri Lankan Government and will continue to do so.”

The Tamil monument during construction (Photo: Knut Vahlensieck, Der Westen)

A sculpture to commemorate Tamil war deaths will be erected in the German town of Essen later this week, reported the German paper Der Westen.

German sculptor Georg Schaab created the12-ton granite monument at the request of German Tamils, who funded it using donations from the community.

“Many Tamils were driven away from Sri Lanka since the civil war in the 1980s and live in exile across the world,” Schaab said.

The opposition candidate at the presidential elections in January, Maithripala Sirisena, invited the Buddhist organisation Bodu Bala Sena for talks, according to the group’s general secretary Gnanasara.

The monk said the BBS received several invitations for discussions on the election from the parties in the common opposition.

“We have not taken any final decision to meet him,” the Daily Mirror quoted Gnanasera.

“I am telling the world. We (UNP and myself), will not allow anybody to take President Rajapaksa or any other leader to international court about war crimes. We will not allow the president whether he won or lose to be tried before war crime tribunals.”

“It is Rajapaksa, as the head of state and commander in chief of the military, who stands accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some people even accuse him of committing genocidal crimes against the Tamil community.  As head of state he has immunity against international law. The day he is beaten in an election and is not head of state. Just has what happened to Charles Taylor or Milosevic who committed genocidal crimes and breached international law, Rajapaksa will be taken by the International Criminal Court and will be charged with committing war crimes.”