Sri Lanka says it won't submit war report to UN

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka said Tuesday it will not forward to the U.N. its report clearing government forces of allegations they targeted civilians during the country's civil war, in an apparent attempt to avoid scrutiny of the document.

Sri Lanka last year successfully prevented discussion at the U.N. Human Rights Commission of an earlier U.N. report alleging that tens of thousands of civilians may have been killed during the final months of the war against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

The U.N. report said there were credible allegations of war crimes against both sides but that most civilian deaths were caused by government shelling, and called for an international inquiry. The Sri Lanka government argued at the time that it would conduct its own investigation instead. The Sri Lankan commission report, released in December, cleared government forces of wrongdoing.

Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, at a meeting Tuesday chaired by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, told foreign reporters that the government has decided not to forward that report to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Suresh Premachandran, a lawmaker for Tamil National Alliance, the leading political party of minority Tamils, said the government may be reluctant to give the report to the U.N. because the document is an attempt to "whitewash" the government wrongdoing.

Submitting the report could create fresh debates on accountability for wartime abuses, Premachandran said.