Resettlement Minister Guneratne Weerakoon has claimed that US Envoy offered him green card and a house in America and asked him to remove the military camps removed in the north.
Speaking at a political meeting he has told in Aranwela on 4th Dec 2014 that he had recordings of the discussion, to which the Secretary to his Ministry was also privy.
Daily FT has reported what minister said at the meeting:
“She came to meet me and said I was a skilled Minister. She said I had done a good job with resettlement,” the Minister said.
Minister Weerakoon said the Envoy had asked him to remove military camps in the north.
“I answered that it is not my job to do that. President Rajapaksa is the Commander-in-Chief. He will not allow the LTTE to raise its head again,” the Minister revealed.
Referring to the US Envoy as “Michele Nona,” Minister Weerakoon alleged that she was involved in pumping money to topple President Rajapaksa’s Government.
“She told me she would give me and my family a green card and ‘we will give you a house in the US, your children will get scholarships’. I replied that I was a man from the south and I didn’t want what she was offering,” he added.
The Minister said that his experience had shown that this was how foreign ambassadors were buying Government ministers.
There was no immediate reaction from the US Embassy to the Minister’s remarks and allegations.
US Ambassador Sison leaves Colombo this weekend for her new posting in New York.
She will be posted as Deputy Ambassador to the UN in New York, where President Barack Obama’s former National Security Advisor Samantha Power serves as Ambassador.
Meanwhile speaking to ‘Colombo Gazette’ the United States has denied allegations raised by a Government Minister who had said that former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Michele J. Sison had offered him a bribe.
The US Embassy in Colombo in response to a question raised by the Colombo Gazette, said that the allegations on Sison, who left Sri Lanka yesterday to take up a post at the UN, were “baseless”.
“They reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of our engagement with senior government officials and our policy towards Sri Lanka as well as the U.S. political and economic system,” the Embassy said in response to the allegations.