New Delhi (NVI): Ahead of his India visit later this week, the newly elected Sri Lankan Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is perceived to be pro-China, has said he won’t work against the interests of India and that he wanted the island nation to be a “neutral country.”
“We will work with India as a friendly country and won’t do anything that will harm India’s interests,” Rajapaksa told Strategic News International in an interview. He is coming to New Delhi on November 29 on his first official trip abroad as Sri Lankan President.
“We understand the importance of Indian concerns, so we can’t engage in any activity which will threaten the security of India,” he added.
Rajapaksa also said that giving away the Hambantota port to China on a 99-year lease was a mistake by the previous government and that the “The deal has to be renegotiated.”
China, which acquired Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port in 2017 as a debt swap, has been strategically cementing its ties with Sri Lanka. China has considerably expanded its naval presence in the Indian Ocean with an established logistics base in Djibouti.
Noting that the Indian Ocean is an important place and plays an important role in the present day geopolitics, he said Sri Lankan was placed in a very strategic location and all the sea lane are passing close to the country from east to west.
“So, these lanes should be free and no country should control these sea lanes,” he said.
He said Sri Lanka’s involvement with China during the presidency of his elder brother Mahinda (2005-2015) was “purely commercial.” “I invite India, Singapore, Japan and Australia to come and invest here. Don’t allow only China to invest.”
