On Wednesday we highlighted British Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s links with President Mahinda Rajapakse's government, and the minister's insistence on meeting the Sri Lankan leader this week despite the growing chorus of demands he be investigated for war crimes.

It seems the much-publicised, yet supposedly 'private', meeting has also made the British government uncomfortable: The Times newspaper reported Thursday that Dr. Fox has been warned by Foreign Office officials.

The leaked cable to the US State Department from US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Patricia Butenis has this week added to growing calls for international investigations into the Rajapakse administration’s culpability for war crimes.

“Any mention of my island home (no matter what British political scandal it may involve), is most welcome. For here is a chance for the world to stop its hurried turning, pause a moment, and remember that savage kingdom in the Indian Ocean. To read once more of the 100,000 Tamils thought to have died in a few balmy days last May.

“Japan's studied refusal to add to the international pressure on the Sri Lankan government, while it continues to pour money into infrastructure development, could be construed as not simply more ineffectual checkbook diplomacy, but in fact a cynical investment in the regime.

“Most of [Sri Lanka’s] deficit reduction plans hinge on turning around loss-making state ventures hampered by subsidy schemes, mismanagement and an infamously intractable corps of bureaucrats.”

It isn’t surprising that the only British politician who will be meeting Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse during his controversial visit to the UK this week is Defence Secretary

Amid a storm of outrage and calls this week by Amnesty International for Britain to pursue war crimes prosecutions against Sri Lankan leaders, the Defence Secretary is going to meet President Rajapakse “in a private capacity”.

"This reflects Dr Fox's longstanding interest in Sri Lanka and his interest in, and commitment to peace and reconciliation there," a spokesman for Fox told The Guardian newspaper.

A closer look at Dr. Fox's long-standing engagement with Sri Lanka suggests otherwise.

“There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power.

“The Oxford Union has in the past faced criticism for inviting other controversial speakers also known for their racist views. However, President Rajapakse is in a different position from [far right leader] Nick Griffin or [Holocaust denier] David Irving.

“Would Sri Lanka be better off wagering on the intelligence of President Rajapakse and his relatively small circle, or on the creativity and hard work of a broader entrepreneurial class? The fact that foreign direct investment, and domestic long-term investment money, is sitting on its hands a year and a half after the war is a sign of which side of that bet the market is taking.”

This is what India’s External Affairs minister S. M. Krishna said Saturday in his speech at the opening of the Indian consulate in Jaffna:

Out of the 55 Secretaries, the senior-most civil servants of Sri Lanka’s ministries, appointed this week, one was a Tamil, another a Muslim; the rest were Sinhalese.

Recruitment of young Tamils or Muslims into the civil service has been negligible over the past several years; this year there were none.