Defense Secretary Fox - where do his interests lie?

(October 14, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Further commenting on the controversy surrounding the Sri Lanka Development Trust - the body that paid Liam Fox's travel expenses to Sri Lanka but is otherwise elusive [1] Fred Carver, Campaign Director for the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice said,

"Liam Fox has a lot of questions to answer. But let us suppose he does answer them and that everything has a rational explanation; then he will not have done anything improper or illegal. But we would still question the morality of his actions.

"We know that Liam Fox and Adam Werrity had meetings with Bell Pottinger on the subject of Sri Lanka[2]. This was during a time when Bell Pottinger was spending millions of pounds of the Sri Lankan taxpayers money [3] on whitewashing the reputation of the brutal Rajapaksa regime.

"Persuading the international community to ignore credible evidence of war crimes is a murky business - and Fox and Werrity should not be surprised that becoming embroiled in it caused their integrity to be called into question. But even if everything was above board, then they still must explain why they felt it was acceptable to collude in the spinning of mass murder at the victims' expense."

ENDS

NOTES

[1] See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3d876284-f4f0-11e0-9023-00144feab49a.html

and http://blog.srilankacampaign.org/2011/10/defence-secretary-fox-where-do-his.html

[2] See http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/oct/11/hotel-records-cast-doubt-liam-fox

[3] See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11606899