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Lankan President Kumaratunga meets Manmohan New Delhi: Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi after arriving here on Thursday on an invitation of a national English daily to participate in a two-day international conference. Minister for External Affairs K. Natwar Singh and National Security Adviser J.N. Dixit were also present on the occasion.
Though the details of the meeting could not be known, reports say Kumaratunga
apprised Singh of the latest situation in her country, especially about
the LTTE problem. The visiting President is slated to meet Congress president
Sonia Gandhi and Dixit separately later in the evening. Kumaratunga's
meting with the Indian leadership assumes significance even as her embattled
nation recently intensified efforts to turn a two-year truce with the
Tamil Tigers into permanent peace.
Kumaratunga had last month launched a new all-party forum to find a breakthrough
in their deadlock with rebels but a clutch of opposition parties have
been boycotting it. India and Sri Lanka, who enjoy strong cultural bonds,
have shared a complex diplomatic relationship since the 1980s. India first
trained Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels in the early 1980s, but later sent
peacekeeping troops to enforce a peace accord. New Delhi, however, moved
away from the island's bloody conflict after the assassination of former
prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, which India blamed on the Tamil Tigers. |
