Former United Nations spokesperson Gordon Weiss has said that the Indian government was fully aware of the battle zone situation in Sri Lanka in 2009, including civilian casualties. He added that the Indians wanted to see the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam destroyed. 

"The Indians were aware of the civilian casualties, because I believe they had very good intelligence sources inside the conflict zone," he said. Weiss, who was the UN spokesperson in Colombo during the peak of the conflict, told the BBC.

He added that the UN did not exert enough pressure on the Sri Lanka government during the last stages of the conflict. "If that were the case, a lot of civilian lives could have been saved," he said.

"But other than minimising civilian casualties, the UN could not have stopped the final assault against the LTTE," he concluded.