'Clinton, Jayalalitha discuss current situation in Sri Lanka'

From Lalit K Jha
Washington, Jul 23 (PTI) US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha had a long
conversation over the current situation in Sri Lanka and felt
the need for greater progress towards reconciliation there, a
State Department official has said.
Last week, Clinton met Jayalalitha during her visit to
Chennai.
"They actually had quite a long conversation about Sri
Lanka, and I think they both agreed that we have concerns
about the situation in Sri Lanka," Assistant Secretary of
State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake told reporters.
"We hope that there's going to be greater progress
towards reconciliation. The meeting sort of comes in the
context of this recent film, the Channel 4 documentary that's
gotten a lot of attention around the world, including here in
the United States," he said.
The United States, he said, believes that Sri Lanka
must investigate the very troubling incidents that were
reported in this documentary and in other documentaries and
bring those that may be responsible for those to justice.
"More broadly, the Secretary (of State) and (Chief)
Minister Jayalalitha talked about how there needs to be
greater progress towards reconciliation and that really, the
government should redouble efforts to reach an agreement in
their dialogue with the Tamil National Alliance on all of the
key issues of concern to Tamils inside Sri Lanka," Blake said.
"That includes issues like an accounting for those who
died at the end of the war, those who may still be in
detention or camps somewhere because I think that's probably
the number one issue of concern to a lot of these IDPs," he
said.
Blake also stressed on the need to finish the
resettlement process with about 12,000 peoples still in camps.
"So the government's made very good progress on that.
They now have to finish the demining efforts. We're helping a
lot in that regard. So that needs to happen," he said.
"I think the government needs to make some progress
also on the human rights piece of it. That includes things
like ending these emergency regulations that have been in
place for a long time, disarming some of the paramilitaries
that continue to be responsible for human rights violations,
and then more broadly, just improving the overall human rights
situation, particularly addressing things like media freedom,"
Blake said.
"This of course is of great interest to the Tamils in
Tamil Nadu, and I think that was reflected in the interest
that the chief minister showed," he said. PTI LKJ
RCJ