More ominously, leaders of some of these western countries – for example, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner, Thomas Mayr-Harting, Austria’s Permanent Representative at the UN, John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs – added their voices to the crescendo of criticism, while attempting to persuade the UN Security Council to intervene in the conflict, and to block the release of a stand-by credit facility of USD 1.9 billion tentatively pledged to Sri Lanka by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Thus, although the official announcement by the Security Council (SC 9659 of May 13) contained a strong condemnation of the LTTE, it also expressed (implicitly) a suspicion regarding the "continued use (by the Army) of heavy calibre weapons in areas with high concentration of civilians". To the great relief of Sri Lanka, the pressures from India were milder than expected, especially against the backdrop of the fierce inter-party rivalry that prevailed in the run-up to the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) elections and the passionate fraternal support which the Tigers draw from certain fringe groups in the South Indian State of TamilNadu.
The government of Sri Lanka has vehemently denied the charges pertaining to its military operations, presenting in the process many sets of evidence intended to highlight its essentially humane approach to all aspects of what it constantly referred to as a "hostage rescue operation". These denials often encountered contradictions, at times even from the foreign diplomatic missions in Colombo, some of which, one must remember, have not been favourably disposed towards the Rajapaksa regime. The resulting intractability of the ‘truth’ finds vivid illustration in the story of a recent confrontation between Gordon Weiss, the UN Representative stationed in Colombo and Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry. A statement issued by the former quoted unnamed sources to assert that a hospital and the hamlet of Karyamullaivaikkal (within the ‘No-Fire Zone’– intended to serve as a refuge to civilians), where the hospital is located, was shelled by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) causing several hundred civilian deaths. This was widely reported by the international media, some of which even carried photographic embellishments of mutilated corpses and destroyed infrastructure meant to be seen as the resulting damage and loss of lives. When questioned by thegovernment whether the information on the alleged attack was verified prior to the issue of the statement, Weiss’ response (to cite an official report that has not been refuted) was: "The problem I had was that of verifying my information, given the lack of access to the war zone"! What appears to be a credible refutation of the story of the ‘Karyamullaivaikkal atrocity’ is found in the battle-front observations reported by Muralidhar Reddy, the Colombo-based correspondent of The Hindu, in its issue of May 15, 2009 . But then, in this no-holds-barred propaganda war, the sceptic could riposte that journalists can be bribed.