Sri Lanka’s government has taken “a policy decision” to “reject outright” the international probe into the island’s wartime mass atrocities authorised by the UN Human Rights Council in a resolution passed on March 27, the Sunday Times reports.

The paper also quoted sources at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which the HRC resolution mandated to conduct the probe, as saying the international investigative mechanism would be in place within three to four weeks.

At a meeting of party leaders last Sunday, three days after the UN vote, the ruling coalition made “a policy decision that the government would in no way allow an OHCHR international investigation in Sri Lanka under any circumstances,” the paper said.

"We have already spoken to the South African High Commissioner about this. I myself have personally spoken to him before Geneva on this, that we need normalcy."

A minister for the Western Provincial Council has called on the Sri Lankan government to ban the Tamil National Alliance, reported the Daily News.

Udaya Gammanpila, who is also a legal advisor to the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), said that the political philosophy of the LTTE should be countered more aggressively by the government, adding that the TNA should also be banned if it called on the government to lift the ban on diaspora organisations.

“Sri Lanka has done only a fraction of what other countries had done to immobilise the political will and functions of terrorist organisations who have been defeated, ” Gammanpila said.

“Our emphasis, in this context, has been to encourage the Government of Sri Lanka to take forward the process of broader dialogue and show concrete movement towards a meaningful devolution of powers, through full implementation of the 13th Amendment and going beyond," said the high commissioner.

"The Sri Lankan government is trying to cut us off from the diaspora, especially trying to stop political parties, such as the TNA and the TNPF, from engaging with diaspora organisations,"

India’s External Affairs Ministry said that the decision to abstain from the resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council last month was a “political decision” for the welfare of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.

Responding to a question about Finance Minister Chidambaram’s criticism of India’s abstention, Foregin Secretary Sujatha Singh said the resolution was “extremely intrusive”.

“Any decision relating to foreign policy is a political decision, is it not? And no official will take a decision without taking a political sign off,” she told PTI.

A senior BJP official said today that the party will not support a separate Tamil Eelam.

Speaking to reporters in Bangalore, Venkaiah Naidu said a solution to the problem has to be reached within a united Sri Lanka and there was no question of supporting a separate Tamil Eelam, as the party was against division of Sri Lanka.