The Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapakse is considering a major Cabinet reshuffle before the end of the month, according to a reliable report received from Colombo. Several senior Ministers are likely to lose the prominent ministerial positions as they are currently holding but will retain some of the Cabinet portfolios. Former MP Wijedasa Rajapaksa, who resigned from the State Bank Development Ministry, will be offered a Cabinet portfolio and National list MP Dallas Alahapperuma is expected to be appointed as the Minister of Information and Media, sources claimed. The decision on reshuffle was reportedly taken by the President with some disappointment over the activities of some Cabinet Ministers.
Among the major changes to the cabinet structure, the Foreign Ministry portfolio will be given to the 20-year veteran of international diplomacy and the former head of UN's Treaty Section Dr. Palitha Kohona. Dr. Kohona recently left his UN post and taken over the post of Special Advisor to President Mahinda Rajapakse on the Peace Process and the Director General of the Secretariat Co-ordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP).
Dr. Palitha Kohona received his secondary education in Sri Lanka, at S.Thomas' College Mt. Lavinia, from where he went on to obtain LL.B (Hons) at the University of Sri Lanka and an LL.M from the Australian National University. He obtained a Doctrate from Cambridge University, UK for the work, 'The Regulation of International Trade through Law', subsequently published by Kluwer, Netherlands. He is also an Attorney at Law, of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.
Prior to assuming the current position Dr. Kohona was the Chief of the UN Treaty Section in New York. He held this position since 1995. This Section is the largest of five divisions of the UN Office of Legal Affairs, which controls a budget US$7.4 million. The Section is responsible for discharging the Secretariat's mandate to register treaties under Article 102 of the Charter and the depositary functions of the Secretary-General for multilateral treaties, e.g. The Land Mines Convention, Kyoto Protocol, Bio-safety Protocol, Treaties on Terrorism and Organised Crime and Human Rights.
At the Treaty Section, Dr. Kohona implemented major managerial changes, including a move to a highly computerized work environment and significantly improved its performance and output earning the UN21 Medal. Dr. Kohona was the Secretary of the UN Inter-Departmental Group established to report on measures to advance the international rule of law and he headed a working group tasked to make recommendations on improving the performance monitoring mechanisms in the Organisation. He led a UN legal delegation to North Korea in 2005 at the invitation of the DPRK government. In February, he was a key speaker at a seminar organized in Canberra by the Australian Joint Parliamentary Committee on Treaties.
Prior to joining the UN, Dr. Kohona was with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia in 1983. Posted to Geneva in 1989, inter alia, he chaired the negotiating group that developed the compliance mechanism under the Montreal Protocol and was closely involved in the negotiation of major multilateral environmental agreements and in the Rio process. Back in Australia in 1992, he was attached to the Uruguay Round of Trade Negotiations institutional mechanisms and dispute settlement unit and, subsequently, headed the Trade and Investment Section of the Department. Under his stewardship many negotiations on investment protection agreements were initiated, including those with the Russian Federation, the Republic of Korea, Argentina and India. He was also responsible for coordinating advice on trade and environment related issues, including those falling under the GATT/WTO.
