Colombo: Amid mounting pressure from the western nations on Sri Lanka to investigate alleged war crime during the ethnic conflict, the government today said that that the politically motivated campaign to undermine the sovereignty of the country will fail as its friends would stand by it.
Foreign Minister G L Peiris underlined that Sri Lanka had not been internationally isolated in the back drop of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's expert panel report which accused Colombo of war crimes and called for a probe.
"There are countries that empathise with us," Peiris said referring to a show of support Sri Lanka secured from Russia and China, the two prominent members of the powerful UN Security Council.
The foreign minister underlined that the politically motivated campaign to undermine the sovereignty of the country will fail and its friends would stand by it.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa had one-to-one meetings with his Chinese and Russian counterpart, Hu Jintao and the Dmitry Medvedev, in Russia on the sidelines of the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg last week.
"China said they respect the sovereignty of Sri Lanka and oppose external forces intervening in Sri Lanka," Peiris said on Rajapksa's meeting with the Chinese President Hu.
Peiris said Russian President Medvedev told Rajapaksa that both his country and Sri Lanka had equally suffered from terrorism and were aware of the pain and destruction of it.
Sri Lanka has dubbed the UN panel report which called for a probe to examins alleged war crimes during the last phase of the civil war with the LTTE as a western ploy to halt the country's progress since the end of the over three decades old conflict in May 2009.
Colombo has accused the western countries of using the UN mechanism as a tool against Sri Lanka.
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