Sri Lankan security forces must face 'reckoning' for war crimes: U.N.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The top U.N. human rights official said on Wednesday that security forces in Sri Lanka should know there must be a "reckoning" with the past and criminal accountability for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the long civil war. Sri Lankan government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels "most likely" committed war crimes including mass killings of civilians that should be prosecuted by a special court with international judges, the United Nations said in a report issued earlier on Wednesday. "We hope, in this process of national soul-searching that will take place, that the security services will understand there must be a reckoning with the past and there must be accountability," Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news briefing in Geneva. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Kevin Liffey)