Sri lanka ruled out sending troops to china
Colombo: Sri Lanka on Wednesday asserted that it was “very firm” on continuing the training programme of its defence personnel in India and ruled out sending them to countries like China.
Sri Lanka’s powerful Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa, also the brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, said his country looks at India in a “much bigger way” than China.
The minister was responding to a question whether Sri Lanka was reconsidering the training programme for its military personnel in India and possibly get them trained in countries like China in the wake of protests in Tamil Nadu.
Dwelling on the issue, he said it has been the practice for any new batch to be sent to India for training and that Sri Lanka has no plans to change the tradition.
“There can be various opinions, but we can’t (shift the programme). We are very firm on that and we have confidence (that it will continue). We have not even thought about,” he said when pressed further on whether Sri Lanka would stop sending its personnel to India.
Speaking about the attacks against Sri Lankan pilgrims in Tamil Nadu, Rajapaksa said that it “hurt” the feelings of Sri Lankan people because it had happened in India, which is regarded as a “big brother and a country which shows the way” for his nation.
“It hurt our feelings, we cannot hide that because we always think India as our big brother or who shows us the way and how should we work. India has taught us all good things. We never thought this will happen…But we have no hard feelings towards India or its people,” he said.
The minister, who is in-charge of reconstruction of the war-torn Northern Province, also noted that most of the pilgrims who were attacked in Tamil Nadu were of Indian-origin Sri Lankans.
Asked whether such incidents will cast a shadow on Indo-Lanka ties, he replied in the negative and appreciated the Indian Government’s initiatives to ensure that such incidents are not repeated in the future.
“I believe that the people of Tamil Nadu understand that nobody gains from such incidents,” he said.
