Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Monday, October 31, 2011 11:17 am TWN, AP and AFP

Sponsors
▪	Save 75% for all hotels in Shanghai, Beijing and whole China. Lowest rates for Flights in China.
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!

Australian Commonwealth summit comes to a close

PERTH, Australia -- Commonwealth nation leaders insisted Sunday that they had made sweeping progress at their biennial summit, despite failing to agree on a key human rights reform recommended by a group that questioned the forum's very relevance.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who had pushed for the appointment of a human rights watchdog during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting — or CHOGM — said the forum had still made progress by strengthening the role the Commonwealth can play when dealing with nations accused of human rights abuses.

“This will provide for an earlier and more constructive engagement by the Commonwealth and the Secretary General where countries are veering from the path of democracy,” Gillard told reporters in the Western Australia city of Perth, where the three-day meeting of 53 Commonwealth nation leaders came to a close on Sunday.

A report by the forum's Eminent Persons Group, which was set up during the last summit to help raise the Commonwealth's profile, had recommended the leaders appoint a human rights commissioner. The forum has been hit with repeated questions of its effectiveness in preventing human rights abuses, particularly in Sri Lanka, which is slated to host the next summit.

Sri Lanka been under intense pressure from human rights groups and countries including the U.S. to investigate allegations of possible war crimes during the final months of its 26-year war with Tamil Tiger separatists, which ended in 2009.

Gillard said Australia supported appointing a human rights watchdog, but several other countries had raised concerns. The prime minister said a group of Commonwealth foreign ministers would examine the proposal further and report their findings to the leaders at a later date.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper have raised the prospect of some nations boycotting the Sri Lanka summit in 2013.

Harper has said he will not attend because of concerns over Sri Lanka's human rights record, while Cameron acknowledged he had discussed the issue and also has reservations.

“The message I have given is — the Tamil Tigers have been defeated, you're in government, you have an opportunity to show magnanimity and also to show a process of reconciliation and demonstrate to the rest of the world that you don't have things to hide. It is very important that pressure is applied,” Cameron told BBC television on Sunday.

“I think they should be aware of the fact that they are holding this Commonwealth summit in 2013 and it is up to them to show further progress so they can welcome the maximum number of countries.”

1|2|Next Page>>