Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse (centre) speaks with President APJ Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after inspecting a guard of honour at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, on Wednesday. — AFP
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New Delhi, December 28
The visiting Sri Lankan President, Mr Mahinda Rajapakse, today had a 40-minute-long one-to-one talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the two leaders chose not to have the usual interaction with the media — a sign that Mr Rajapakse’s visit is more exploratory than substantive in nature.
The two sides chose to keep mum on what transpired during the meeting at the highest level. However, Sri Lanka watchers said Mr Rajapakse would have inevitably urged India to play a larger and pro-active role in the Sri Lankan peace process despite knowing New Delhi’s position.
India is being pressured by Colombo as well as powers like the United States, Japan, EU and Denmark to become the fifth Co-chair on the Sri Lankan peace process but India has resolutely kept itself out of the quagmire of the internal politics of Sri Lanka. India’s reservation is that it does not want to get sucked into the island nation’s politics after having burnt its fingers there once.
What was made official after the talks was that Mr Rajapakse briefed the Indian side of his assessment of the current status of the peace process in Sri Lanka and both sides agreed that peace talks aimed at strengthening the ceasefire should begin at the earliest.
After the Manmohan-Mahinda talks, delegation-level talks were held where the two sides discussed conclusion of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, cooperation in the field of railways, civil aviation, information technology and energy. The discussions also covered the wide ranging economic and commercial cooperation that already exists between the two countries, as well as ways and means of enhancing it in the coming years, the Foreign Office spokesperson said.
Mr Rajapakse’s visit — his first abroad after he took over as President — has come at a time when there has been a spurt in terrorist violence. The LTTE has killed 45
