DMK to quit UPA on Lankan resolution

Chennai : DMK president M. Karunanidhi Sunday said the party would pull out of the UPA if the government did not take steps to bring amendments to the US-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka in the UNHRC.

Karunanidhi told reporters: “If our requests are not heeded, our relationship with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will not continue.”

Karunanidhi said he has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi Saturday asking the central government to take steps to bring amendments in the US resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Centre (UNHRC).

Karunanidhi wants that the UNHRC “declares that genocide and war crimes had been committed and inflicted on Eelam Tamils by the Sri Lankan army and the administrators”.

He also “strongly urges the establishment of a credible and independent international commission of investigation into the allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of international human rights law, violations of international humanitarian law and the crime of genocide against the Tamil People”.

To a query if the amendments would be accepted by the US, Karunanidhi said: “If India does not suggest the amendments it will be a big injustice to the Lankan Tamils. That is why we said it will be meaningless to continue in the alliance.”

He said nobody from the UPA government had approached him after his ultimatum to pull out of the alliance March 15.

The DMK has five members in the prime minister’s council of ministers.

Sri Lanka is under attack over the death of a large number of Tamil civilians during the final stages of the war that crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.