PRESIDENT USING SINO-INDIAN RIVALRY IN SRI LANKA

PRESIDENT USING SINO-INDIAN RIVALRY IN SRI LANKA – SARAVANAMUTTU

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is using the perceived Sino-Indian rivalry to keep at bay New Delhi’s concerns over the Tamil community, says a leading rights activist from Colombo, Indian media reports.

But India has many options to ensure that promises repeatedly made by Rajapaksa to Indian leaders are kept so that minorities feel a sense of equality, P. Saravanamuthu told a group of Sri Lanka watchers here late Wednesday.

Saravanamuthu, executive director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, said Rajapaksa was “cleverly” using contradictions in the international community - between the West and Asia, between China and India - to its political advantage.

“But the Rajapaksa regime needs to recognise that they can use the China card to a certain extent, not forever,” Saravanamuthu said at a meeting organised here by the Sanchal Foundation.

In recent times, China and India have emerged as two of Sri Lanka’s biggest economic partners. India is Sri Lanka’s largest trade partner, and Beijing became Colombo’s biggest single lender in 2009.

A section of India’s strategic community is concerned over China’s growing clout in Sri Lanka — evident in its involvement in mammoth infrastructure projects and military ties with Colombo.

This has happened at a time when the US has scaled back military assistance to Colombo while Britain and Germany have pruned their economic aid because of unhappiness over the Rajapaksa regime’s rights record.

Saravanamuthu said if India wants, it can assert itself, “and it has a lot more options”. He noted that changes seemed to be coming about in India’s stand from a time when it wholeheartedly backed the Rajapaksa regime.

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