New Delhi: India had signed three pacts with Sri Lanka including nuclear cooperation agreement with Sri Lanka on Monday.
India had signed strategic partnership with Sri Lanka’s new government. President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Narendra Modi concluded a civil nuclear cooperation agreement, which is Sri Lanka’s first nuclear partnership with any country.
PM Modi had called it the bilateral agreement on civil nuclear cooperation as “another demonstration of our mutual trust.”
He said India and Sri Lanka had also agreed to expand defence and strategic cooperation, including a “trilateral format” with the Maldives.
It had been now expected that PM Modi will visit Colombo in mid-March, and sources said that he was likely to include Male in his itinerary.
Officials on both sides said the agreement on nuclear cooperation was an initial one and would not lead to the construction of nuclear energy reactors immediately.
According to an official release, the agreement “would facilitate cooperation in the transfer and exchange of knowledge and expertise, sharing of resources, capacity building and training of personnel in peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including use of radioisotopes, nuclear safety, radiation safety, nuclear security, radioactive waste management and nuclear and radiological disaster mitigation and environmental protection.”
Sri Lanka President Sirisena had called his visit to New Delhi a “remarkable milestone” in taking India-Sri Lanka relations to a “greater height”.
He also expressed satisfaction that the visit had “borne very fruitful results.”
Mr. Sirisena and Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnessed the signing of three agreements on agricultural cooperation, a memorandum of understanding on Nalanda University and an agreement on cultural cooperation.
On the conflict between Tamil fishermen from India accused of trespassing into Sri Lankan waters, PM Modi said a solution must be found by the fishermen’s associations of both countries as it affected the livelihood of people in both countries.
He said, “We agreed that there must be a constructive and humanitarian approach to the issue.”
Bureau Report
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