Sri Lanka’s front-running presidential candidate Gotabhaya Rajapakse vowed yesterday that if elected he will scrap Colombo’s pledge to investigate war crimes committed during his brother Mahinda’s decade in power.

Gotabhaya was defence secretary during his brother’s rule, when troops were accused of killing up to 40,000 Tamil civilians while crushing the Tamil Tigers. A later government co-sponsored a US-led resolution to appoint an independent panel to look into the actions of both sides in the final stages of Sri Lanka’s bloody separatist conflict, although it was never formed. But on Tuesday the 70-year-old Gotabhaya said he would not honour the commitments made to the UN Human Rights Council, saying people needed to “move on”.

In response to questions by AFP about Sri Lanka’s wartime human rights record, he said: “Why are you talking all the time on the past”.