COLOMBO, Nov 13, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has appointed the final member to the six-member committee to investigate the U.S. report on alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka, a senior government minister said on Friday.
The sixth member to the committee is senior lawyer Anura Meddagoda, Minister of Human Rights and Disaster Management Mahinda Samarasinghe told reporters on Friday.
Samarasinghe said the report would be submitted to President Mahinda Rajapakse by Dec. 31.
The presidential investigation committee on the U.S. report titled "Incidents during the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka" is chaired by the president's counsel D. S. Wijesinghe.
The committee will investigate the report which lists 170 offences between May 2 and 18 this year, during the final phase of ground assault on the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) .
The controversial report prepared by the War Crimes Office of the U.S. State Department is based mostly on internal reports to Washington from the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, satellite imagery, international relief organizations and media outlets.
The United States said in the report that thousands of Tamil civilians were killed due to being used as human shields or by indiscriminate government shelling.