Sri Lan­ka should re-con­cep­tu­al­ise its po­si­tion as an In­di­an Ocean coun­try, while ex­plor­ing the use of para-di­plo­ma­cy to reap max­i­mum ben­e­fit out of cur­rent world af­fairs which has at­trac­ted great­er fo­cus to the Asian re­gion, said For­eign Min­is­ter Man­ga­la Sa­mar­a­weera. He was speak­ing as the Chief Guest at the 20th Con­vo­ca­tion cer­e­mo­ny of Ban­dar­a­naike In­ter­na­tion­al [...]

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Sri Lan­ka should re-con­cep­tu­al­ise its po­si­tion as an In­di­an Ocean coun­try, while ex­plor­ing the use of para-di­plo­ma­cy to reap max­i­mum ben­e­fit out of cur­rent world af­fairs which has at­trac­ted great­er fo­cus to the Asian re­gion, said For­eign Min­is­ter Man­ga­la Sa­mar­a­weera.
He was speak­ing as the Chief Guest at the 20th Con­vo­ca­tion cer­e­mo­ny of Ban­dar­a­naike In­ter­na­tion­al Dip­lo­mat­ic Train­ing In­sti­tute (BID­TI) held at the BMICH on April 30.

For­mer Pres­i­dent Chan­dri­ka Ban­dar­a­naike Ku­mar­a­tun­ga was the Guest of Hon­our at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the Post­grad­u­ate Di­plo­ma and Di­plo­ma cour­ses in Di­plo­ma­cy and World af­fairs for the aca­dem­ic year 2013/2014.

“On al­most ev­ery meas­ure, the world’s cen­tre of grav­i­ty is shift­ing to­wards the East, so there can be no doubt that this is the Asian Cen­tu­ry: By 2030, Asia is pro­jec­ted to be­come the world’s larg­est eco­nom­ic re­gion, while in 2013, for the first time in mod­ern his­to­ry, Asian De­fence spend­ing ex­cee­ded Eu­rope’s,” said Mr Sa­mar­a­weera.

He fur­ther said that Sri Lan­ka should have a sys­tem­at­ic ap­proach and mech­a­nism for har­ness­ing the di­a­spora. “To our loss, they have not fea­tured prom­i­nent­ly in our For­eign pol­i­cy­mak­ing and, as a coun­try, we have done lit­tle to har­ness their cap­i­tal, re­la­tion­ships and knowl­edge for our de­vel­op­ment. This is not true of many oth­er coun­tries. In­dia has an en­tire min­is­try dedi­ca­ted to Over­seas In­di­an Af­fairs, while eight oth­er coun­tries al­so have di­a­spora af­fairs min­is­ter­ial port­fo­lios.”

Mr. Sa­mar­a­weera em­phas­ised that the For­eign pol­i­cy of the coun­try must be aligned to the in­ter­ests and wel­fare of all Sri Lan­kans. He al­so said that, for the mod­ern Sri Lan­kan dip­lo­mats, sales­man­ship will be as im­por­tant as states­man­ship.

“Se­cur­ing for­eign in­vest­ment, en­cour­ag­ing ex­ports, pro­mot­ing tour­ism and ac­quir­ing for­eign ex­per­tise will be at the very cen­tre of the For­eign min­is­try’s role,” he said.

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