International News

Mladic goes on trial at The Hagu

Thursday, 17 May 2012 00:00

The former Bosnian Serb army commander, Ratko Mladic, went on trial on Wednesday accused of carrying out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and Europe's worst massacre since World War II.

“Ratko Mladic assumed the mantle of the criminal goal of ethnically cleansing Bosnia,” prosecutor Dermot Groome told judges as the trial opened at the Yugoslav war crimes court in The Hague.

Mr. Mladic (70) has been indicted on 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the Balkan country's brutal 1992-95 war that killed 100,000 people and left 2.2 million homeless.

Sarath Fonseka will be released soon, says Rajapaksa

Tuesday, 15 May 2012 09:31

Jailed former Army Commander of Sri Lanka Sarath Fonseka, who led the Eelam war IV against the Tamil Tigers and helped win it, is set to be released shortly.

“We will release him soon,” Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa told The Hindu on the sidelines of a function organised to launch a book, Gota's War, here on Monday.

MP's role

Mr. Rajapaksa said the person who tried hard to secure Gen. Fonseka's release, Member of Parliament Tiran Alles, was out of the country.

Mr. Alles was in the U.K. and he was cutting short his visit to reach Colombo on Tuesday, a source said. “He [Mr. Alles] has to get the credit for the release [of Gen. Fonseka],” the President said.

Kudankulam comments taken out of context, says Sri Lankan Minister

Monday, 14 May 2012 10:24

Long after the controversy created by his remark on the safety of the nuclear power plant at Kudankulam has died down, Sri Lankan Electricity Minister Champika Ranawaka has blamed the Indian media for taking his comments out of context.

The Minister had stated that Sri Lanka would take up in the next session of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the safety of the new Indian reactors at Kudankulam. Sri Lanka was concerned, he had said, about the fallout in the event of an accident at the plant.

He now claims that all he said was that Sri Lanka and India would discuss the issue at the next session of the IAEA. And he blames Indian journalists for the non-issue developing into a major story.

“I take great care when answering questions posed by Indian journalists now,” he wrote in his weekly column in the pro-government newspaper The Nation. “This is because some comments I made regarding the Koodankulam nuclear power plant were taken out of context by some of these same journalists, leading to a major diplomatic incident,” he said.