NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has decided against attending a Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka this week over the island nation's human rights record, an Indian official said Sunday. Singh will be the second leader after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to boycott the Nov. 15-17 meeting. There are 54 members of the Commonwealth, a loose association of former British colonies. Their decision is expected to sharpen focus on the demand by Western nations and rights activists that Sri Lanka account for thousands of civilians who are suspected to have died in the final months of a quarter-century civil war that that ended in 2009 when government forces crushed separatist Tamil rebels. Singh sent a letter to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa expressing his inability to attend the summit, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. Contents of the letter were not immediately known. India, which has a major interest in the issue because southern India is home to 60 million Tamils, has been urging Sri Lanka's government to resume negotiations with an ethnic Tamil party on increased local autonomy for Tamils. Singh bowed to pressure from political parties in India's southern Tamil Nadu state, which neighbors Sri Lanka, to boycott the Commonwealth summit on suspicion that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was not doing enough to protect the interests of the Tamil minority. Canadian Prime Minister Harper said last month that Canada was disturbed by ongoing reports of intimidation and incarceration of political leaders and journalists, harassment of minorities, reported disappearances and allegations of extrajudicial killings. Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain boycotting the Commonwealth summit over alleged war crimes would damage the organization while achieving no positive change in Sri Lanka. British Prime Minister David Cameron has said he will be putting “serious questions” to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse at the 53-member organization's biennial summit. “We do understand that (boycott by India PM), but we're not joining that,” Hague told BBC television. “If we were to stay away from this meeting in Sri Lanka next week, it would damage the Commonwealth without changing things positively in Sri Lanka,” he said. “We are going to say well, Sri Lanka is in the spotlight so let's make full use of it being in the spotlight. Rather than sit in London and talk about it, we will be there in Sri Lanka.” Hague said Cameron would become the first foreign head of government since Sri Lanka's independence from Britain in 1948 to go to the island's mostly Tamil north. Cameron said earlier Sunday he had watched “No Fire Zone”, commissioned by Britain's Channel 4 television, which features footage of apparent war crimes shot by both Tamil witnesses and government soldiers. “No Fire Zone is one of the most chilling documentaries I've watched,” he said. — Agencies
