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Last night, in a dimly lit side street a stone’s throw from the towering UN headquarters here in New York, Britain co-hosted a drinks party with Sri Lanka -  a country led by regime accused of the worst war crimes committed this century. Australia joined the fray to render it a tripartite affair.

This was an early taster of what is to come. An institution – the British Commonwealth – is to play a macabre role in securing the re-entry into the family of nations of a country which has unaddressed blood on its hands on an horrific scale.

Commonwealth countries will be greeted and facilitated by a president, and a government, against whom evidence exists of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which we have screened and which the UN itself has substantiated.

The reform programme underway inside the Commonwealth is centred on human rights. On the basis of the prickly charm offensive conducted last night, a terrible pact has perhaps been entered into not to mention Sri Lanka’s war crimes.

Why is Britain prepared to co-host even a drinks party with Sri Lanka’s government so long as those horrifying closing weeks of Sri Lanka’s civil war, and the war crimes that flowed from them, remain unaddressed?

Why was the UN’s own point person on these matters prepared to grace the event?

Why is the British Commonwealth prepared to blind ahead with this vast meeting of heads of government in Sri Lanka so long as the continuing human rights crisis there remains unaddressed?

Why is President Mahinder Rajapaska to be allowed to remain, for the next two years, the chairman of a movement that claims human rights at the very core of its being?

And why is British tax payers money being used even to fund either a drinks party, or any of this?