The chairman of the Sri Lankan government's Presidential Commission into Missing Persons said the authorities had not set a deadline to complete its investigations.

The commission was announced over two years ago, under the previous Sri Lankan government led by former president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The commission’s Chairman Maxwell Paranagama told The Sunday Leader that the commission would not yet fix a date as to when it would conclude, stating that investigations were still ongoing.

Last month, marking the “The Day of the Disappeared”, Amnesty International stated that successive Sri Lankan governments have appointed and largely ignored commissions to investigate the issue of disappearances.

Sri Lankan police today disrupted a signature campaign in Trincomalee, calling for an international accountability mechanism to deal with mass atrocities committed during the final stages of Sri Lanka’s armed ethnic conflict.

The organisers of the campaign were asked by police to meet the chief inspector over a complaint that they were forcibly recruiting signatures in Trincomalee.

President of the Tamil National People’s Front Gajen Ponnambalam, who went to the police station, tweeted that the campaign was filmed by the police media unit, pointing out that the police could confirm that the allegations were untrue by checking their footage.

Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe met with the commanders of the country’s army, navy and air force, alongside Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, to discuss an ‘acceptable format’ for the domestic inquiry the government says it will conduct.

A senior official of the foreign ministry described the discussion last week as an ‘initiation’ and said the officials will reach an agreement on the best mechanism to be adopted to handle outstanding issues of accountability, which will again be scrutinised at the UN Human Rights Council later this month, The Sunday Observer reported.

The official further said, the news reports that the government has shared details of the domestic mechanism with the US, had no basis.

The inquiry into the floating armoury, which was suspected to have been used by former defence chief Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has been dropped.

The CID informed the court it would not proceed with the case as per the instructions of the Attorney-General.

A magisterial inquiry into Avant Garde Maritime Services, a private firm, was established after police seized more than 3,000 weapons in 20 containers from containers, soon after the presidential elections in January.

The constituents of the new national government says it will extend the parameters of its Memorandum of Uderstanding to include a common, formal response to the report of the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL).

Speaking to the Sunday Times, UNP Chairman Malik Samarawickrema said the response to the OISL will be one of the highlights of the extended MoU between the SLFP and the UNP.

Sri Lanka’s former commander of the army praised China for supporting the government during the armed conflict, stating that without it “we would not have been able to finish the war”.

Sarath Fonseka, who was recently promoted to Field Marshal, told Xinhua that Chinese support for Sri Lanka’s war effort was crucial and praised their “historic relationship” with the government.

"Without China's support we would have not been able to finish the war, basically," said the former army commander on Friday. Fonseka led the Sri Lankan army during the final phases of the armed conflict where tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed. An upcoming UN report into the final weeks of the war is due to be released later this month, with many of the deaths due to Sri Lankan government shelling.

China sold large quantities of military hardware to the Sri Lankan government, including Jian-7 fighter jets, anti-aircraft guns and JY-11 3D air surveillance radars.