Indian FM meets Sri Lanka’s new leadership, assures support in economic rebuilding

Indian FM meets Sri Lanka’s new leadership, assures support in economic rebuilding
Sri Lanka's new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake receives Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar in Colombo on Oct. 4, 2024. (Indian Ministry of External Affairs)
Short Url
Updated 04 October 2024
Follow

Indian FM meets Sri Lanka’s new leadership, assures support in economic rebuilding

Indian FM meets Sri Lanka’s new leadership, assures support in economic rebuilding
  • S. Jaishankar is the first top foreign official to meet Sri Lanka’s new president
  • India was a key partner in extending support to Sri Lanka during its 2022 economic crisis

New Delhi: India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar arrived in Colombo on Friday to meet Sri Lanka’s new president and government and assure New Delhi’s continued support.

Sri Lanka’s new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake took office on Sept. 23, after winning the country’s first presidential vote since its financial collapse in 2022.

A day later, he appointed his three-member government and dissolved the parliament, clearing the way for new parliamentary elections scheduled for Nov. 14.

The Indian foreign minister is the first top foreign official to pay an official visit to Sri Lanka since its regime change.

He took to X after meeting Dissanayake, Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya and Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath.

“Discussed ways to deepen ongoing cooperation and strengthen India-Sri Lanka ties for the benefit of people of two countries and the region,” Jaishankar said, as he also expressed “India’s continued support to Sri Lanka’s economic rebuilding.”

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs said the visit aimed to “further deepen the longstanding partnership” between the countries under India’s Neighborhood First Policy and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s geopolitical framework of cooperation in the Indian Ocean region.

Dissanayake, the country’s first Marxist-leaning leader, took over the job on the promise of change, as the island nation of 22 million is still reeling from the crisis and austerity measures imposed by his predecessor as a part of a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund.

Sri Lanka’s largest trading partner, India in 2022 emerged also as the main source of support to its battered economy.

“India has been consistently engaged with the Sri Lankan leadership since the economic crisis, and Jaishankar’s visit is a signal that despite the change in government, India is likely to continue to work closely with the new dispensation,” Prof. Harsh V. Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, told Arab News.

“India intends to have as close ties with this government as it had with the previous. I think this is a signal of India’s interest … India is keen to continue the momentum in the relationship that had set in after India became the most active player in helping Sri Lanka get out of the economic crisis.”

The lineup of Sri Lanka’s new government will be finalized after November’s election. Currently, the president, the prime minister and the foreign minister have divided all the portfolios among themselves. A proper cabinet will be appointed after the parliamentary vote, with the composition depending on its results.

“India has registered that it is willing to work with the new government. That is the main message from the visit … Other details about projects, investment and other things will take time,” N. Sathiya Moorthy, a political analyst in Chennai, told Arab News.

“Every Sri Lankan remembers how India rushed to help during their economic crisis. So, the new government will not overlook that sentiment also.”


Indian troops kill 2 suspected rebels in disputed Kashmir

Indian troops kill 2 suspected rebels in disputed Kashmir
Updated 10 sec ago
Follow

Indian troops kill 2 suspected rebels in disputed Kashmir

Indian troops kill 2 suspected rebels in disputed Kashmir
  • Indian soldiers intercepted a group of militants in a forested area in southern Anantnag district on Saturday, leading to a gunbattle
  • India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety
SRINAGAR, India: Two suspected militants were killed in a gunfight with government forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said Saturday, while troops also exchanged fire in the disputed region’s main city.
India’s military in a statement said soldiers intercepted a group of militants in a forested area in southern Anantnag district on Saturday, leading to a gunbattle that killed two rebels.
In a separate incident in the region’s main city of Srinagar, police and paramilitary soldiers exchanged fire with at least one militant after troops cordoned off a neighborhood on a tip that he was hiding in a house.
Residents said the troops torched the home where the rebel was trapped, a common tactic employed by Indian troops in the Himalayan region. There was no independent confirmation of the incident.
India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety. The nuclear-armed rivals have fought two of their three wars over the territory since they gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

Spain braces for more flood deaths, steps up aid

Spain braces for more flood deaths, steps up aid
Updated 5 min ago
Follow

Spain braces for more flood deaths, steps up aid

Spain braces for more flood deaths, steps up aid
  • Hopes of finding survivors more than three days after torrents of mud-filled water submerged towns and were slim
  • Officials have said that dozens of people remain unaccounted for, but establishing a precise figure is difficult

VALENCIA: Rescuers resumed a grim search for bodies on Saturday as Spain scrambled to organize aid to stricken citizens following devastating floods that have killed more than 200 people.
Hopes of finding survivors more than three days after torrents of mud-filled water submerged towns and wrecked infrastructure were slim in the European country’s deadliest such disaster in decades.
Almost all deaths have been recorded in the eastern Valencia region where thousands of soldiers, police officers and civil guards were frantically clearing debris and mud in the search for bodies.
Officials have said that dozens of people remain unaccounted for, but establishing a precise figure is difficult with telephone and transport networks severely damaged.
Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska on Friday told Cadena Ser radio station that 207 people had died and that it was “reasonable” to believe more fatalities would emerge.
It is also hoped that the estimated number of missing people will fall once telephone and Internet services are running again.
Restoring order and distributing aid to destroyed towns and villages — some of which have been cut off from food, water and power for days — is a priority.
Authorities have come under fire over the adequacy of warning systems before the floods, and some residents have also complained that the response to the disaster is too slow.
Susana Camarero, deputy head of the Valencia region, told journalists on Saturday that essential supplies had been delivered “from day one” to all accessible settlements.
But it was “logical” that affected residents were asking for more, she added.
Authorities in Valencia have restricted access to roads for two days to allow emergency services to carry out search, rescue and logistics operations more effectively.
Thousands of ordinary citizens pushing shopping trolleys and carrying cleaning equipment took to the streets on Friday to help with the effort to clean up.
Camarero said some municipalities were “overwhelmed by the amount of solidarity and food” they had received.
The surge of solidarity continued on Saturday as around 1,000 people set off from the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia toward nearby towns laid waste by the floods, an AFP journalist saw.
Authorities have urged them to stay at home to avoid congestion on the roads that would hamper the work of emergency services.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez chaired a meeting of a crisis committee made up of top cabinet members on Saturday and is due to address the country later.
The storm that sparked the floods on Tuesday formed as cold air moved over the warm waters of the Mediterranean and is common for this time of year.
But scientists warn that climate change driven by human activity is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of such extreme weather events.


Kyiv comes under heavy Russian drone attack

Kyiv comes under heavy Russian drone attack
Updated 19 min 13 sec ago
Follow

Kyiv comes under heavy Russian drone attack

Kyiv comes under heavy Russian drone attack
  • Ukraine said on Saturday Kyiv had come under heavy drone attack overnight, as fresh explosions were heard in the capital and other regions were struck

Kyiv: Ukraine said on Saturday Kyiv had come under heavy drone attack overnight, as fresh explosions were heard in the capital and other regions were struck.
“Unfortunately, the attack by Russian drones caused damage and casualties in various districts of Kyiv,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
He said that the “constant terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities prove that the pressure on Russia and its accomplices is not enough.”
AFP reporters heard new explosions in Kyiv on Saturday afternoon amid an air raid alert.
In the morning Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 39 out of 71 drones launched from Russia overnight.
The drones targeted the Kyiv region surrounding the capital, the Sumy border region as well as the central Kirovograd and Poltava regions.
Twenty-one drones were lost and five returned to Russia, the air force said, adding that the drone attack was continuing.
The air force said debris from downed drones had damaged houses and blocks of flats in four regions including Kyiv, Sumy and the Black Sea Odesa region.
Kyiv’s military administration said that debris from air defenses shooting down drones fell in six districts of the capital, damaging blocks of flats and cars and sparking several fires in buildings that were extinguished.
A policeman was injured, the administration said.
In the Kyiv region outside the capital, an 82-year-old woman suffered head wounds from shrapnel, officials said.
In a village near the southern city of Kherson, a 40-year-old woman was pulled dead from rubble after Russian troops fired artillery and four were injured including three children, the governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
The health ministry said that a hospital in Kherson was struck, damaging two wards and a laboratory.
The medics and patients were uninjured as they had taken shelter.
Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky warned on Saturday that his troops on the ground were “holding back one of the most powerful Russian offensives since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.”


Greek police arrest man over Athens apartment blast

Greek police arrest man over Athens apartment blast
Updated 02 November 2024
Follow

Greek police arrest man over Athens apartment blast

Greek police arrest man over Athens apartment blast
  • Man shared the keys of the flat with the couple involved in the blast but denied any involvement in the explosion

ATHENS: Greek police have arrested a 31-year old man for his role in an strong home-made bomb explosion which killed one man and seriously injured a woman in an apartment in Athens this week, police said on Saturday. The case, according to police officials, is linked to anti-establishment guerrilla groups. Anti-terrorism police suspect the blast occurred while the bomb was being made.
The Greek man arrested had testified regarding the case on Friday night. According to police sources, he said he shared the keys of the flat with the couple involved in the blast but denied any involvement in the explosion.
He is expected to appear before a prosecutor later on Saturday.
Several left-wing and anarchist guerrilla groups, declaring war on all forms of governments, have emerged in Greece over the past two decades after the dismantling of its most lethal group, “November 17.”
Small bomb and arson attacks against politicians, police, judges and businesses were frequent during the country’s 2009-18 debt crisis. They have abated in recent years but still occur.


Harris, Trump go toe to toe in frenzied final campaign weekend

Harris, Trump go toe to toe in frenzied final campaign weekend
Updated 02 November 2024
Follow

Harris, Trump go toe to toe in frenzied final campaign weekend

Harris, Trump go toe to toe in frenzied final campaign weekend
  • Kamala Harris is bidding to become the country’s first woman president
  • Opinion polls continue to show a tied race, particularly in the seven battleground states

WASHINGTON: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump enter the final weekend of the most tense US presidential campaign of modern times with a flurry of swing-state rallies that will test their stamina — and ability to persuade the country’s last undecided voters.
Harris, bidding to become the country’s first woman president, will use rallies in Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan to drive home her message that Trump is a threat to US democracy.
Trump — seeking a sensational return to the White House after losing in 2020 and then becoming the first presidential nominee to have been convicted of crimes — promises a radical right-wing makeover of the government and aggressive trade wars to promote his policy of “America first.”
The 78-year-old, who rallied in Milwaukee, Wisconsin late Friday just miles from Harris’s event there, will all but cross paths with her again as Trump makes whistle-stops in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Their frenetic schedule will run right into Monday, culminating with late-night rallies — in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Trump and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Harris.
Election Day is Tuesday but Americans have been voting early for weeks, with more than 70 million ballots already cast — including a record four million in Georgia, where Democrats seek to pull out all the stops to keep the state in their column.
Opinion polls continue to show a tied race, particularly in the seven battleground states likely to determine the result in the US electoral college system, leaving the Republican businessman and his 60-year-old Democratic rival fighting hard to peel off even slivers of support from one another’s camps.
Harris, currently President Joe Biden’s vice president, is doing that by appealing to centrist voters and propelling her base to the polls with a robust ground game and get-out-the-vote effort.
And by painting Trump as a toxic authoritarian, she is also encouraging voters to “finally turn the page” on the former president.
“He is someone who is increasingly unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance — and the man is out for unchecked power,” she told supporters in Little Chute, Wisconsin.
Trump, meanwhile, has doubled down on his already extreme rhetoric in hopes of firing up his loyal base to turn out in massive numbers.
“Kamala’s closing message to America is that she hates you,” Trump fumed on Friday night in Warren, Michigan, where he trashed the economy under Biden and Harris as a disaster — which economists say it clearly is not — and warned that “a 1929-style economic depression” would ensue if Harris were elected.
Citing her hawkish foreign policy views, Trump earlier had conjured the image of former Republican representative turned Harris supporter Liz Cheney being shot.
“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said.
Despite the rhetoric, Trump waxed nostalgic on Friday about how his experience campaigning over the past nine years has been “the thrill of a lifetime.”
“And now we want to take that thrill and turn it into ‘let’s do business,’ right?“
Harris, the nation’s first Black and first Asian-American vice president, meanwhile has sought to harness celebrity star power like Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen in the campaign’s waning days.
Jennifer Lopez, a pop icon of Puerto Rican heritage, joined Harris onstage Thursday, amid a firestorm triggered by a Trump rally warm-up speaker branding the US territory a “floating island of garbage.”
Grammy-winning rapper Cardi B appeared with the candidate Friday night, asking the crowd in Milwaukee, “Are we ready to make history?“
With the election just days away — and Trump refusing to say whether he would accept its results if he loses — businesses in the capital Washington have begun boarding up shop fronts as city authorities warn of a “fluid, unpredictable security environment” in the days after the polls close.
Trump is already alleging fraud and cheating in swing states such as Pennsylvania, laying the groundwork for what many fear will be more unrest, following the violence that erupted at the US Capitol in the wake of the 2020 vote.