The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has backed the views expressed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding Sri Lanka and its rejection of the probe into allegations of human rights violations during the war.

“The Secretary-General supports the views of High Commissioner Zeid, and he agrees with High Commissioner Zeid that the Government of Sri Lanka should cooperate.  And we will continue to urge that they do so,” Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General, told the noon press briefing on Monday.

The UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Friday had accused Sri Lanka of sabotaging the UN-mandated war crimes probe into the country’s nearly three decades-long brutal civil war, saying the refusal to cooperate with the investigation raises concerns about the integrity of the government.

“This continuing campaign of distortion and disinformation about the investigation, as well as the insidious attempts to prevent possible bona fide witnesses from submitting information to the investigating team, is an affront to the United Nations Human Rights Council which mandated the investigation,” he had said.

However, the following day Sri Lanka reacted strongly to the comments, calling the charges “extremely regrettable”.

“The Government of Sri Lanka, its departments and agencies made no attempt whatsoever to prevent bona fide witnesses from submitting information to the investigation team,” Colombo’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ravinatha Aryasinha, said in a statement.

“Neither was any attempt made to deter and intimidate individuals from submitting evidence. The submissions that the Investigation would have received by now would stand to prove this fact,” he added.