Minister's Speeches

The Keynote Address delivered by the Minister of External Affairs, Prof. G.L. Peiris on 1^st August, 2011 at the launch of the report compiled by the Ministry of Defence entitled "Humanitarian Operation - Factual Analysis" at the Colombo Hilton.

Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Secretary to the Ministry of Defence, in his address, referred to “an unexplored agenda” on the part of our critics.  I think that is a very crucial phrase in the presentation he made to you.  I would like to adopt that as a point of departure for my own remarks.  We need to establish a clear line of demarcation between political agendas, on the one hand, and a genuine concern with regard to moral and ethical issues, on the other.  When the Goldstone Report on Gaza and the West Bank was released, there was a comment made by no less a person than Mary Robinson, the former United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, on the reasons why she absolutely refused to have anything to do with the report which had been prepared by Justice Richard Goldstone. Mary Robinson said, and I am paraphrasing her own words, “I distance myself from this exercise, I have nothing to do with it, because this is an exercise not in human rights but in politics.”  Those were the words of Mary Robinson, the former United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights. 

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