colombo – The Milli Chronicle

India, UAE to develop Sri Lanka energy hub as Delhi competes with China for influence

Millichronicle — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 15:16:30 +0000

New Delhi (Reuters) – India and the United Arab Emirates agreed to develop an energy hub in Sri Lanka, India’s foreign ministry said on Saturday, as New Delhi’s competition with China grows in the Indian Ocean island nation.

The three nations signed the pact for the hub during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Sri Lanka, the first by a global leader since Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake took office in September.

New Delhi and Colombo have worked to deepen ties as India’s southern neighbour recovers from a severe financial crisis triggered in 2022, during which India provided $4 billion in financial assistance.

Saturday’s agreement boosts New Delhi’s competition with China, whose state energy firm Sinopec (600028.SS) has signed a deal to build a $3.2-billion oil refinery in Sri Lanka’s southern port city of Hambantota.

The energy hub in the strategically important city of Trincomalee, a natural harbour in the Sri Lanka’s east, will involve construction of a multi-product pipeline and may include using a World War Two tank farm partly held by the Sri Lankan subsidiary of Indian Oil Corp (IOC.NS), Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told reporters in Colombo.

“The UAE is a strategic partner for India in the energy space and therefore was an ideal partner for this exercise that is being done for the first time in the region,” Misri said. “The exact contours of UAE’s role will be elaborated once the business to business discussions kick off.”

The three nations will next choose business entities that will consider the financing and feasibility of projects for the hub, he said.

Modi also inaugurated a $100 million solar power project, a joint venture between Ceylon Electricity Board and India’s National Thermal Power Corp (NTPC.NS).

India and Sri Lanka also concluded their debt restructuring process, Foreign Secretary Misri said. Sri Lanka owes about $1.36 billion in loans to EXIM Bank of India and State Bank of India, according to Sri Lanka Finance Ministry data.

Colombo kicked off debt restructuring talks after it defaulted on its debt in May 2022, signing a preliminary deal with bilateral creditors Japan, India and China last June.

India and Sri Lanka also signed pacts on power grid connectivity, digitalisation, security and healthcare.

Burqa ban just a ‘proposal’, Sri Lanka says after criticism from allies

Millichronicle — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 19:51:00 +0000

Colombo (Reuters) – Sri Lanka said on Tuesday a call to ban the wearing of the burqa was “merely a proposal”, following criticism from regional allies ahead of a crucial United Nations vote on human rights in the island nation.

Sri Lanka’s minister for public security, Sarath Weerasekera, said on Saturday it would “definitely” ban the full face covering worn by some Muslim women on national security grounds, pending cabinet approval.

But the foreign ministry said on Tuesday a decision had not yet been taken on what it described as “merely a proposal… under discussion”.

“The government will initiate a broader dialogue with all parties concerned and sufficient time will be taken for necessary consultations to be held and for consensus to be reached,” it said in a statement.

Muslims make up around a tenth of the population in majority-Buddhist Sri Lanka.

The statement follows criticism from Pakistan’s ambassador to Sri Lanka, Saad Kattak, who said in a tweet on Monday a ban “will only serve as injury to the feelings of ordinary Sri Lankan Muslims and Muslims across the globe”.

Ahmed Shaheed, a Maldivian diplomat currently serving as the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, said a ban was incompatible with international laws that protect religious belief and freedom of expression.

Several Muslim-majority countries, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, are among the 47 nations that will vote on Sri Lanka’s human rights record at a United Nations session in Geneva next week.

A UN resolution passed against Sri Lanka could allow for prosecutions of government and military officials involved in ending a decades-long civil war in 2009, and Colombo is sensitive to anything that may impact voting there, according to a person familiar with the developments.

Almost a third of the 47 nations are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which last year criticised a Sri Lankan policy to forcibly cremate coronavirus victims in the country, in violation of the Islamic tradition of burial.

The policy was repealed last month.

Easter attack bomber was radicalized by London-based hate-preacher Anjem Choudhary, claim reports

Millichronicle — Tue, 14 May 2019 17:00:25 +0000

Colombo — One of the Srilankan suicide bombers of the Easter attacks, was radicalized by London-based terror-monger Anjem Choudhary, while he was studying at a university in London.

The 37-year-old Abdul Latheef Mohamed Jameel, who belongs to a wealthy and oppolent Srilankan family, reportedly met the hate-preacher while studying at Kingston University in London, as reported by BBC.

The 52-year-old Choudhary mentor of Al-Muhajiroun network was convicted and jailed in 2016 for inviting alliance for ISIS, but he was released by British intelligence in 2018.

Jameel, a father of four children, was the link between local radicals and IS or other Islamist groups based abroad, Sri Lankan security officers told the BBC. Jameel studied in the UK and Australia before he tried to go to Syria.

Jameel was one of the nine bombers who carried out a series of blasts targeting three churches and three hotels in Colombo in which which nearly 360 people were killed.

Jameel’s primary target on April 21 Easter bombings was the Taj Samudra hotel of Tata Group’s hospitality arm, Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL), but he missed the target since his bomb probably failed and he was seen escaping the premises. But he later blew himself up at a motel in the suburb of Dehiwala, killing two guests.

“When I asked him how he got into this… he said that he attended the sermons of the radical British preacher Anjem Choudary in London. He said he met him during the sermons,” a security official told BBC.