Lanka's war of blame

(Sutirtho Patranobis, Hindustan Times June 25,)President Mahinda Rajapaksa could have expectedly felt reassured last week after meeting friends, Hu Jintao and Dmitri Medvedev, at an economic forum in St Petersburg, Russia. No one can blame Rajapaksa for feeling a little hot lately under the collar of his starched white shirt and customary red stole.

The last three months have been particularly hard on Rajapaksa's reputation of being a strongman and meeting powerful friends is one way of snapping out of a dark, diplomatic corner where he was pushed into on human rights issues.

First in April came the damning UN experts' panel report followed in May by a book, The Cage, by a former UN staff. Then rather cruelly in June came the hardest blow: Channel 4 released the documentary, Sri Lanka's Killing Fields - all three squarely blaming the Lankan government and its army for deliberately shelling and killing thousands of Tamil civilians.

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