UNITED NATIONS, (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he lacks the authority to personally order a probe into the mass killings of civilians in the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war, as a report recommended yesterday.
A panel appointed by Ban said in the report on the 2008-2009 fighting in northeastern Sri Lanka that it found evidence that the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were guilty of war crimes and recommended that those crimes be investigated and suspects prosecuted.
It urged him to proceed to establish “an independent
