The Press office of Buckingham Palace said they could not ‘confirm or deny’ if Her Majesty the Queen would be attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to be held in November in Sri Lanka.
An official from the Press Office told Daily Mirror when contacted that the office was not in the habit of issuing statements on matters of a sensitive nature such as visits of members of the royal family to the press unless it was close to the date of the scheduled visit. “It is the Commonwealth Secretariat that is best placed to answer this” an officer told Daily Mirror Online.
Earlier, the London based paper, the Sunday Guardian, quoted unnamed officials within the Commonwealth Secretariat in London as saying that the Queen was “almost certain to skip the meeting,” scheduled for November15-17. Several Heads of Government were also “likely to keep away” from the Colombo meeting “in protest against Sri Lanka’s human rights record,” the official added. (Hafeel Farisz)
Source: Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka)
