COLOMBO, SEPT 29: Two days after being asked to "mind its own business" by Sri Lanka and not make comments relating to the country's ethnic conflict, the United Nations (UN) mission here has put out a statement that seeks to both water down its "deep concern" for civilian casualties in the ethnic conflict and also to reassert this concern.Foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar had taken strong exception to the UN and International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) articulating their concern at civilian casualties in the Lankan conflict after two tragedies earlier this month - a bombing that killed 21 people in the north-east and a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) attack two days later on a Sinhalese village in Ampara, south-eastern Sri Lanka, that left 50 people dead.Kadirgamar was described by the state-run Daily News on Tuesday as "livid" at the comments. The newspaper quoted the foreign minister saying that mentioning the two incidents "in the same breath", as both the UN and ICRC did, gavethe impression that one justified the other.The short but careful statement issued by the UN on Wednesday noted that the government had told its officials that the Mullaithivu bombing was an "accident". "In response, the distinction was noted (by the UN) between a tragic but accidental event leading to civilian casualties and a deliberate attack upon civilians who have been identified as specific targets," the statement said.That said, the UN also made it clear that it will not restrict its concern to "malaria and mosquitoes" as advised by Kadirgamar."In noting the government's position, the UN representatives (in a recent meeting with government representatives) emphasised that civilian casualties, whether accidental as stated by government with regard to the Mullaithivu incident, or deliberate, as in the case of the September 18 Ampara attack, remain a humanitarian tragedy."Perhaps it is only half-coincidence that the war of words has come in the background of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's calllast week for more active UN intervention in situations where the rights of civilian populations are at risk.There is also a heightened sensitivity in Sri Lanka to UN's role in East Timor. Sri Lanka is one of the countries that has taken exception to Annan's emphasis on placing human rights over sovereignty. In Sri Lanka's own ethnic conflict, foreign minister Kadirgamar has strongly stated that there is no case "for anyone including the UN" to intervene.Addressing journalists in New York, Kadirgamar said earlier this week that "fundamentally it is an internal question. Many of us are against the UN getting involved in internal questions of states". Kadirgamar warned that though no one could stand by in the face of gross abuse of human rights, circumvention of the UN Charter "is never a good thing, whatever the magnitude, the scale and the moral content of the human rights violations may be".
