'The record before the LLRC is inadequate to draw conclusions ruling out unlawful attacks when there are thousands of witnesses who did not come forward'

The report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was presented to the parliament and consequently released to the public on 16 December.

"Despite the Sri Lankan government's propaganda that their brutal campaign against the LLTE was conducted with little or no damage to civilians, the evidence of shelling of civilians and mass deaths was too much for the commission to ignore," the ICG said in a statement.

In its report the LLRC has accepted that "considerable civilian casualties had in fact occurred during the final phase of the conflict" and "that shells had in fact fallen on hospitals causing damage and resulting in casualties".

War crimes

Though the report makes sensible recommendations on governance, land issues and the need for a political solution, said the ICG, it has failed in a "crucial task" of providing the thorough and independent investigation of alleged war crimes committed during the last stages of war.

'The Sri Lankan government’s past three years of denial, dissimulation and intimidation of critics has proven it is neither willing nor able to carry out impartial and effective investigations'

"It is now incumbent on the international community, through the UN Human Rights Council, to establish an independent international investigation in 2012," it said.

The Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Sri Lanka’s main Tamil political party, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) have strongly criticised the war panel report, mainly for its “failure” to investigate accountability issues.

But relatives of nearly 600 policemen abducted allegedly by the Tamil Tigers in 1990 commended LLRC’s recommendation for a proper investigation into the incident.

"Yet the report works to exonerate the government and undermine its own limited calls for further inquiry – mostly by accepting at face value the largely unexamined claims of the senior government and military officials who planned and executed the war, and by rolling back well-established principles of international law," said the ICG.

The ICG, also accused the LLRC's of misinterpreting the principles of international law.

"Allowing the LLRC's regressive statement of international law to stand could have consequences beyond Sri Lanka," it said.