Ahead of EAM Jaishankar visit this week, India backs Sri Lanka’s focus on development | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: As he prepares to receive India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar this week, Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake met Indian high commissioner Santosh Jha who conveyed India’s readiness to support Sri Lanka‘s development process in any way possible, while also appreciating the president’s anti-corruption agenda.
Taking to X, Dissanayake said that Jha emphasised that India wished to see Sri Lanka emerge as a peaceful and stable State in the region.The meeting took place ahead of Jaishankar’s visit on Friday, which will be the first by any foreign minister to the island nation since the Marxist leader assumed office. TOI had reported on Tuesday that Jaishankar will visit Sri Lanka on Oct 4.
Jaishankar’s visit for a meeting with the new president, barely a couple of weeks into Dissanayake’s presidency, is meant to build on the Indian outreach to the relatively unfamiliar leader ahead of the presidential poll that saw him visiting India earlier this year. Indian govt is also banking on the goodwill generated by its $4 billion-worth assistance to the strategically crucial Indian Ocean nation – in the middle of an acute financial crisis – to ride out any negative fallout from the winds of political change blowing in the country.