Sri Lanka refused permission to the USA to station two of its warplanes at a civilian airport within the island’s south in early March, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake mentioned Friday.
Washington needed to relocate two of its missile-armed plane from a base in Djibouti to Sri Lanka’s civilian Mattala Worldwide Airport, Dissanayake informed parliament.
The request, made on Feb. 26, two days earlier than the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran started, was turned down to keep up Colombo’s neutrality and guarantee its territory was not used for any army function that would assist or hinder both facet, he mentioned.
Sri Lanka was drawn into the implications of the struggle when a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate, the IRIS Dena, simply off its coast in March.
“They needed to deliver two warplanes armed with eight anti-ship missiles to Mattala Worldwide Airport from March 4 to eight, and we mentioned ‘no’,” Dissanayake mentioned.
He didn’t say whether or not the U.S. request was to make use of Sri Lanka as a base for the plane to hold out offensive actions in opposition to Iran.
Dissanayake mentioned Iran, too, had requested port calls for 3 of its warships, coming back from India after a naval train, on the identical day the U.S. requested permission to station their two plane.
“We had been nonetheless contemplating the Iranian request to deliver the three ships to Colombo from March 9 to 13. Had we mentioned ‘sure’ to Iran, we’d have needed to say ‘sure’ to the U.S. too,” he mentioned. “However we did not. We’re steadfastly sustaining our place of neutrality.”
