By IANS,
New Delhi: India’s amendments to make the US-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka tougher at the UNHRC could not be incorporated due to lack of consensus, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said Thursday.
He said India’s amendments “could have been put in the resolution provided there was a consensus”.
“They wanted the largest number of members to support the resolution. We didn’t want to break the consensus…” he told reporters.
According to Khurshid, the amendments could be tried in separate attempts later.
“..it could be tried after sometime in terms of separate attempts,” he said, adding India was “more interested in passage of the resolution”.
The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva Thursday adopted a US-sponsored resolution on alleged human rights violation in Sri Lanka with 25 countries, including India, voting in favour and 13, including Pakistan, voting against it.
The US-sponsored resolution asked Sri Lanka to conduct an “independent and credible” probe into allegations of human rights violations.
“India wanted accountability for no other reason but in order to allow sustainable peace to prevail in Sri Lanka and that the Tamil population of Sri Lanka must get their due,” he said.
Khurshid said “what we have said is that it has to be an independent and credible that is also be acceptable to the international community”.
He said India’s ties with Sri Lanka will not be influenced by the vote.
“India is active bilaterally with Sri Lanka.”
“We continue to engage them bilaterally and we hope that our engagement is going to be beneficial for them and will address the aspirations of the people in India, including the Tamils in India,” he said