COLOMBO: A top international panel on Wednesday accused Sri Lanka of failing to honour promises to investigate grave human rights violations and accused the government of a virtual cover-up.

The 11-member International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) said a government probe into 16 high-profile cases, including mass murder, had failed to make headway since being launched in November 2006.

“The IIGEP concludes that the investigation and inquiry process to date fails to comply effectively with international norms and standards,” a statement said.

The group asked a Presidential Commission of Inquiry to take urgent steps to address the concerns, including serious conflict of interest by hiring state lawyers to look into the collusion of state employees in atrocities.

“The IIGEP reiterates its opposition to the leading role of the officers of the (state) Attorney General’s Department in the Panel of Counsel to the Commission, which involves serious conflicts of interest.

“This situation lacks transparency and compromises both national and international standards of independence and impartiality that are central to the credibility of and public confidence in the Commission,” the statement said.

The panel led by Retired Indian chief justice P.N. Bhagwati handed in a report raising serious concerns to President Mahinda Rajapakse on Tuesday.

Rajapakse appointed the IIGEP to supervise another Presidential Commission that was probing the violations following concern that the investigations would not meet international standards.

Human rights activists had expressed fears that the government would use the IIGEP to whitewash its tainted human rights record.

France’s new Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, a former member of the IIGEP, had warned of criticism if Sri Lanka failed to make progress in the investigations.

The cases include the massacre of 17 aid workers employed by the French charity, Action Against Hunger, or ACF, in August last year.

Other members of the panel include experts and professionals from Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and the US as well as the EU and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

More than 5,400 people have been killed since December 2005 as fighting in Sri Lanka’s bitter ethnic war escalated despite a ceasefire agreed in 2002.

Rights groups accuse the government and Tamil rebels of extra-judicial killings and scores of disappearances of civilians and political activists.—AFP