Mend your ways please

Sri Lanka needs to get serious about post-war reconciliation and account for war crimes if it needs to avoid grief, US Ambassador Michele J Sison has said.
Painting a grim picture of the situation in Sri Lanka, Sison told the Foreign Correspondents Club here on Monday that Colombo should stop treating calls for reconciliation and accountability as foreign "exhortations".
"History has shown that societies that do not adequately address reconciliation and accountability usually return to a conflict situation at some point down the road," she said.
"Thus, however difficult this process is, it is ultimately vital to the stability of Sri Lanka."
Sison explained at length why the US, despite being a friend of Sri Lanka, piloted a resolution critical of Colombo in 2012 and again in March this year at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
She urged the government to talk to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) "on political devolution", return to owners property taken by the military, and resolve outstanding land claim issues.
"The people of the former conflict zones must be able to live their lives without interference, as do other citizens of Sri Lanka," she said, referring to the island's northeast where the military defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009.