BY COLUM LYNCH, Foreign Policy, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 - "She tends to be strongest when the human rights violations involved are committed by U.S. adversaries," Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, recently told me. "But she is less strong when violations are committed by U.S. friends, like Rwanda or Israel, or by governments more in the middle, like Sri Lanka." Sri Lanka has never featured prominently in discussions on foreign policy in Washington. But the final phase of the countries decades-long civil war, which ended in May 2009, resulted in the largest case of mass atrocities under President Obama's watch. An internal U.N. review of the crisis blasted the U.N. Secretariat for failing to fulfill its obligation to protect civilians. But the report also cites the failure of the U.N. Security Council -- where Rice represented the United States -- to act decisively to stop the violence, which resulted in the slaughter of 40,000 to 70,000 civilians, mostly at the hands of the Sri Lankan government.

27 April 2011 - The United States has welcomed the public release of the UN Panel of Experts’ report on Sri Lanka. “We appreciate the detailed and extensive work of the panel and believe it makes a valuable contribution to next steps that should be taken in support of justice, accountability, human rights, and reconciliation in Sri Lanka,” Susan Rice, the US Permanent Representative to the UN said in a statement.