Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena yesterday met with the Australian prime minister with fighting people-smuggling high on the agenda.
Sirisena is making the first visit by a Sri Lankan head of state to Australia.
His visit to Canberra and Sydney marks the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the countries.
After meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, he was scheduled to speak with Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton.
“President Sirisena’s visit will be an opportunity to advance key areas of bilateral cooperation, including education, defense, science and technology, economic development, medical research and the fight against people-smuggling,” Turnbull said in a statement before the meeting.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe during an Australian visit in February said that Sri Lankan asylum seekers held on Pacific island camps who could potentially settle in the US were free to return home without fear of persecution.
Sri Lankans, Iranians and Afghans are the largest national groups among more than 2,000 asylum seekers who are kept at Australia’s expense on the Pacific islands nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
However, no Sri Lankan asylum seeker has reached Australia by boat since 2013.
Australia refuses to resettle any of them and US President Donald Trump has agreed to honor a deal by the administration of former US president Barack Obama to resettle up to 1,250 of them.
US officials have begun the process of assessing applicants for resettlement.
Sri Lanka has been reconciling its population since a bloody 26-year civil war ended in 2009.
Before becoming prime minister in January 2015, Wickremesinghe had accused Australia of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in Sri Lanka in return for Sri Lankan government support in preventing asylum seekers from reaching Australia.
Sirisena this week used a Cabinet reshuffle to remove his country’s minister of foreign affairs Mangala Samaraweera, who spearheaded a successful campaign to extricate Sri Lanka from possible international sanctions over war crime allegations from the country’s long civil war.
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