Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has been under fire for failing to respond to Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission report, despite assurances that he would.

The report, which was released in December 2011, has already been criticised by both the Canadian and British governments, as well as facing further condemnation from human rights groups.

In its latest edition, The Economist writes about the Rajapakse clan's stranglehold on Sri Lanka.

See below for extracts.

Douglas Devananda, a Sri Lankan minister and leader of the paramilitary group, EPDP, threatened physical attacks on journalists, reported Tamilnet.

In an article published Thursday, Tamilnet quoted Devananda as saying,

“I told my [paramilitary] boys to beat up these journalists. But, the boys are not paying attention. It seems I have to go in person and do it to make these journalists behave"

Members of the Tamil National Alliance met with US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Stephen Rapp, who is on a 4-day visit to Sri Lanka.

Mr Rapp and TNA leader R. Sampanthan and MP M A Sumanthiran held discussions relating to the issues faced by Tamils on the island.

The visit comes as the US is gearing up for the UN Human Rights Session in Geneva later this month.

The US is thought to be preparing a resolution against Sri Lanka and is actively engaging with other countries garnering support for it.

Photograph IOL News

Tamils in South Africa staged a protest on 4th February demanding an international investigation into the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sri Lanka.

The US State Department said on Monday two senior diplomats are due to visit Sri Lanka later this month for talks about war crimes committed during the final months of the military conflict against the LTTE.

Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs Robert O. Blake and Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights, Maria Otero are visiting the island from February 12-14.

Issues to be discussed with Sri Lankan officials include "peace, accountability and reconciliation processes".

“At a time when the failure of existing UN institutions is increasingly noted in relation to safeguarding human life and preventing brutal wars, the contribution of a documentary such as ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ in bringing to light not only this failure in the context of the war, but also promoting the need for reviewing and revitalising the UN’s capacity in cases similar to the Sri Lankan war, are immense."

“By bringing to light the breaches of international conventions by the Government of Sri Lanka in a bold manner and by piecing together numerous forms of evidence in a coherent way, the value of independent journalism to the building of a peaceful global order in the century ahead has been amply demonstrated by the ITN team.”

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), widely criticised for its perpetual dithering, slammed the 13th Amendment to Sri Lanka's constitution as "full of flaws" on Saturday.

The TNA's spokesperson, MP Suresh Premachandran, said,