In an interview to the Debrief news channel, Robert O'Blake, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asia, warned of renewed violence in Sri Lanka if the government failed to take "real concrete action".
Asked by the presenter why the US was tabling a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council, despite Sri Lanka giving assurances, as a sovereign country, that it will act towards reconciliation, Blake said,
See here for full interview."Well you know, the government has made many assurances, and again I think it's important now for there to be an action plan and for the government to take real action."
"And frankly, when I visited Colombo about three weeks ago or so, I came away with the sense that the government was still hesistating about whether to go ahead with an action plan on this."
"So I think once again it is important to encourage the government to take action right now, to develop an implementation plan, and as I've said in other interviews, the experience of many other countries that went through a similar kind of civil insurgency and failed to take real concrete actions of reconciliation and accountability found that in many cases those civil insurgencies restarted because the levels of frustration were very high, and I think there is a similar risk here in Sri Lanka."
