Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris on Tuesday urged Washington to seize business and other opportunities in post-war Sri Lanka rather than focus only on alleged human rights abuses in the country.
Visiting Washington after Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s party won parliamentary elections last month, Peiris parried criticism from human rights activists and others amid a week of talks here to push for closer ties.
A year after the end of the civil war, “the circumstances are propitious for a certain strengthening and deepening of the relationship between Sri Lanka and the United States,” Sri Lanka’s chief diplomat said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“We are not in any way resentful of the focus on human rights. That is understandable. We are not complaining about it,” Peiris told a gathering hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
“But we are making the point that the relationship should not be one-dimensional. There are many other things that Sri Lanka and the United States can do together,” he said.
Rajapakse has come under fire at home and abroad for allegedly violating human rights in the final military campaign against the Tamil rebels and of suppressing dissent since his resounding re-election victory in January.
Representatives from the International Crisis Group and Amnesty International aired some of the alleged abuses in a question-and-answer session with Peiris following his speech about post-election and post-war developments.
Business opportunities abound, said Peiris, who was minister for international trade in the previous government.
“In particular, as we open up the country, as we rebuild the infrastructure, I think there is a great deal of scope for American companies to come in and participate fully in that exercise,” he said.
Pieris talked of a new “mood of optimism” in Sri Lanka, adding the “whole country was coming alive” as foreign tourists begin arriving in large numbers and foreign investors eyed hotel construction.
He also urged Washington to find ways to work with Colombo, which now chairs the Group of 15 developing countries, in order to pursue “common interests” like tackling climate change and access to markets.
He also said that, because conditions had changed in his country, he would also seek changes in US policy that bar US training of the Sri Lankan military.
Pieris said he met on Monday with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and met on Tuesday with US senators and congressmen. He plans to meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tomorrow after she returns from east Asia.
Clinton’s spokesman Philip Crowley last month urged Sri Lanka’s new government to use its mandate to pursue a “healing process” as the Indian Ocean island recovers from decades of war.
Apparently responding to the appeal, Peiris said the “principle effort of the government is to do everything possible to heal the wounds of the past ... and to make the transition to democracy ... as smooth as possible.”
He said the new government has moved fast to repeal most of the emergency measures that had been in place for years.
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