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Committed to power devolution: Rajapaksa

B. Muralidhar Reddy and Sandeep Dikshit

Plight of fishermen figures in his talks with Manmohan

— PHOTO: AFP

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa during a meeting in Colombo on Friday.

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday that his regime was committed to implementing ‘comprehensively’ the provisions of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on power devolution.

Immediately on his arrival from New Delhi by a special aircraft Dr. Singh had a bilateral meeting with Mr. Rajapaksa and exchanged views on a wide range of issues of concern to India and Sri Lanka.

The plight of fisher folk straying into each other’s waters figured prominently in the course of the talks. Both agreed on the need to deal with fishermen apprehended in Sri Lankan waters in a ‘humanitarian manner.’

“At the same time, the Indian authorities were urged to continue to discourage Indian fishermen from crossing the International Line of Demarcation, as their presence is used by the LTTE as cover for its activities,” a statement issued by the President’s Secretariat said on the bilateral engagement.

Mr. Rajapaksa told Dr. Singh that the All Parties Representative Conference (APRC) was expected to submit recommendations to forge a further political consensus of solution to the current crisis.

The Sri Lankan President said the security operations in the North were progressing and the security forces had been told to exercise utmost caution against casualties among civilians.

Dr. Singh told Mr. Rajapaksa that one cannot envisage a prosperous India without strong links with her neighbours, and the present SAARC Summit in Colombo provided an opportunity for such a partnership.

Mr. Rajapaksa told the Prime Minister that Sri Lanka valued the economic benefits Sri Lanka derived from the investments of Indian entrepreneurs.

He also thanked the Indian government for the development cooperation to Sri Lanka, including the rehabilitation of the tsunami-affected Southern Railway, for which a Memorandum of Understanding was due to be signed.

Later Dr. Singh met the former Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentary leader R. Sampanthan and other political representatives.

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