Although the suspension of Sri Lanka’s GSP+ facility, important especially to the garment export industry is due to be endorsed by European finance ministers in Brussels on Feb. 16, it will not be effective for a six month period, reports from Brussels said.

This is to give manufacturers and traders time to adjust to the new rules and also to give Colombo ``a fair opportunity to get the decision reversed,’’ a Brussels datelined AFP report said.

``We will look to work with Sri Lanka to identify concerted steps and actions which could help us to plot the course together that would enable Sri Lanka to regain GSP+,’’ the report quoted a European diplomat in Brussels saying.

AFP quoted Ambassador Ravinatha Ariyasinha in Brussels saying he hoped the formal decision would not be taken given that the situation had changed for the better since the EU investigating was carried out.

Ariyasinha said Colombo "remains hopeful that better sense will prevail upon member countries of the EU who themselves have faced similar situations in their long history and are acutely conscious of the complexity of democracies fighting terrorism."

He said the EU investigation into rights in Sri Lanka was concluded last year before the end of the war against the Tigers, before it was possible to deal with the related problem of displaced people and before the recent elections in Sri Lanka.

"It's like taking the temperature of a patient when he has a fever and then pronouncing him dead ten months later after he has recovered and is doing well," he told AFP.