DISASTER Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe yesterday (11) said the UN Spokesman in Sri Lanka Gordon Weiss would be summoned to the Foreign Ministry over his comment to the media that there was a bloodbath in the No Fire Zone.
Addressing a news conference at the Presidential Secretariat Samarasinghe said "It is not the first time that Weiss has gone beyond his mandate and made adverse remarks about the internal strife in the country. We have every right to deal with him."
Weiss made these remarks to the AFP news agency on Sunday.
Foreign Secretary Dr Palitha Kohona responding to a query whether he had questioned Weiss over the remarks at issue said, according to protocol he did not deal with officials at Weiss’ level.
"I reported the matter to higher authorities at UN," he said.
Minister Samarasinghe said the media on Sunday had given wide publicity to a story given by a person who called himself Dr Shanmugarajah, working in the No Fire Zone as a government doctor. He had claimed that the government troops had killed 372 civilians and injured 1,100 during the last few days by firing and shelling.
This story and the video footage had been provided by a Tamil pressure group called Mercy Group in Canada, Minister Samarasinghe said.
"The undated video footage shows civilians running for life and some injured people covered with blood and the so called doctor said the incident was due to shelling fire from the government controlled area.
The TV channel which telecast this story had gone by the version of the Tamil pressure group from Canada, he noted.
An authoritative Health Ministry source said that inquiries revealed that there was no such doctor attached to the Health Department serving in the No Fire Zone.
If the so called doctor Shanmugarajah was a government doctor as he claims he should first have informed his superiors at the Ministry in Colombo about what was going on the Minister said.
"LTTE could have coerced some one to do it for them and the person who made these claims would have done it under pressure," Samarasinghe said.
(Courtesy: The Island)
