New Delhi: India and Sri Lanka on Wednesday signed seven agreements, including pacts on security and law, as Colombo reassured New Delhi that it intended to resettle displaced Tamils and to seek a political solution to the ethnic issue.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held wide-ranging talks with Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa and urged him to give political and financial autonomy to Tamils.
India requested the Sri Lankan delegation to give a political package to the Tamils this year itself but didn’t dictate any terms to and would prefer any model of decentralization Rajapaksa chooses.
Rajapaksa spoke about his plans for election reforms and Tamil representation in Sri Lanka’s upper house of Parliament.
India will open two new consulates in the country: - one in Jaffna in the north and the second in Hambantota, a port of strategic importance in the in south where the Chinese have a significant presence. India and Sri Lanka also made progress on resolving the political deadlock over Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which seeks deeper economic ties between the two nations.
After the talks, the two sides signed seven pacts to boost bilateral cooperation across a range of areas, including security, energy, railways and cultural exchange.
The seven agreements included mutual legal assistance on criminal matters, exchange of sentenced prisoners, deepening cultural exchanges, interconnectivity of electricity grids, funding and executing small development projects, construction of a railway line and setting up of a women's trade facilitation and community learning centre.
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