Sri Lanka Saturday categorically rejected the prospect of setting up a resident UN human rights mission in the island.
"We are a government and we have our own constitution. We are not willing to discuss a mission for monitoring purposes, neither we are ready to open up an office," Sri Lanka's Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told reporters.
Samarasinghe made the remarks when addressing a joint press conference with Louise Arbour, the UN Human Rights High Commissioner after the latter ended her four-day visit to the island.
Arbour said abductions and disappearances are continuing in the island and lamented lack of proper actions to investigate such complaints.
"The weak rule of law and prevalence of impunity are alarming," Arbour said.
She said although Sri Lanka had resources and institutions to safeguard human rights in the island, there exists a gap.
The Sri Lankan government has faced large scale accusation of rights abuses from international watch dogs, but it maintains that tough action is needed to combat the threat of terrorism posed by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Arbour was prevented from visiting the Tamil Tigers, but she visited the northern town of Jaffna during the visit.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in the new wave of violence between government troops and the LTTE since the end of 2005.
Claiming discrimination at the hands of the Sinhala majority, the LTTE has been fighting the government since the mid-1980s to establish a separate homeland for the minority Tamils in the north and east.
Source: Xinhua
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