India’s virtual wooing continues. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet his Sri Lankan counterpart, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, virtually for a bilateral summit on September 26. This will be the first official engagement between the two leaders after Rajapaksa’s election victory last month.
“The summit will give the opportunity to two leaders to comprehensively review the broad framework of the bilateral relationship soon after Parliamentary polls in Sri Lanka and in context of time-tested friendly ties," the external affairs ministry said in a statement.
The elephant in both the rooms will be China. The summit comes at a time when friction at the India-China border looms large over the neighbourhood ties. Sri Lanka’s economic indebtedness to China had already been a factor between Delhi and Columbo. Now with the Sino-Indian relations taking a nosedive, South Block will be keen to keep the balance tilted in favour of India.
Sri Lanka too, is treading carefully. After Rajapaksa’s landslide victory in August, there has been an attempt to assuage Indian concerns. Sri Lanka’s new foreign secretary, Jayanath Colombage, in an interview in August said that the government would never allow China to use Sri Lanka as “a staging area” to hurt the “strategic security interests” of India. Quoting President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who declared that the country would always have an “India first” approach, he said, “That means Sri Lanka will not do anything harmful to India’s strategic security interests.’’
The one-to-one bonhomie between the leaders has been on display for a bit. Prime Minister Modi was the first leader to call Rajapaksa to congratulate him on his victory. And Rajapaksa tweeted his “warm wishes’’ and “success and best health’’ for Modi’s 70th birthday last week. The summit will give them a chance to cement these personal bonds even closer.
For its part, India has tried to counter Chinese money in Sri Lanka. New Delhi has allowed a $400 million currency swap facility to the country to help revive a faltering economy. New Delhi is also mulling over the proposal by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to delay the debt repayment to India.
