DHAKA: Sri Lanka is planning an investigation into accusations of human rights abuses in the final stages of a 26-year civil war amid international frustration at the failure to look into numerous civilian deaths.

A government spokesman said on Thursday, reports The Straits Times.

Former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was ousted in a surprise election defeat this month, had refused to cooperate with any United Nations investigation into claims the army committed atrocities in the war that ended in 2009.

Without some accountability for civilian deaths, the United Nations argues there will be no lasting reconciliation to allow Sri Lanka to move on from the war that dragged on for decades as ethnic Tamil rebels battled for autonomy in the island’s north and east.

‘We are thinking of having our own inquiry acceptable to them to the international standards,’ Rajitha Seneviratne, a government spokesman, told a forum of foreign correspondents in Colombo late on Wednesday, referring to the United Nations.

‘It will be a new local inquiry. If we need, we will bring some foreign experts.’

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in November accused Rajapaksa’s government of trying to ‘sabotage’ its own investigation and creating a ‘wall of fear’ to prevent witnesses from giving evidence to its inquiry set up in March.

BDST: 1300 HRS, JAN 29, 2015