By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, February 8 -- While UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praises Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa's “flexibility,” even as Ban's Panel on Accountability is blocked from traveling to Colombo, the EU's Catherine Ashton on Tuesday was more direct when Inner City Press asked her Tuesday about the removal of GSP Plus tariff benefits for the country.
“It's me that did the GSP Plus removal from Sri Lanka,” she said. “It's important if you have a program that says, this is conditionality, if you don't do it or you do something in breach of it that there are consequences. I stand by that completely. We did our own independent look into what had been going on. I'd like to see Sri Lanka make progress.”
Inner City Press asked her about the UN's position, saying (before being cut off by her spokesman) that “the government is not going to allow.”
Ashton said that “the government usually doesn't allow things like that. The President took the power to prevent independent inquiry, wouldn't allow someone in to do the inquiry into GSP Plus, which meant that it was much more complicated. So the words 'the government doesn't allow' are not unusual.”
Meanwhile Ban Ki-moon cites a 2005 visit while he was South Korean foreign minister as somehow pushing for accountability, and praises Rajapaksa's “flexibility.” Seven weeks later, with the UN now offering Sri Lanka a mere video conference call, will Ban explain his statements? Watch this site.
Inner City Press also asked Ashton about Myanmar. She said she and ASSK are exchanging letters, and that she hopes the EU will be able to send someone to visit her soon, as well as others in the opposition. We'll see.
