Bay of Bengal nations need to increase intelligence sharing: President

Regional states and waters continue to be threatened by narcotics, smuggling, human trafficking, terrorism, and the spreading of religious extremism, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said addressing the virtual BIMSTEC summit today.

Rajapaksa who chairs the 5th Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) Summit said increased intelligence sharing and inter-governmental and inter-agency cooperation amongst BIMSTEC member countries to manage such threats.

“Sri Lanka’s experience in Easter Sunday attacks in 2019 demonstrate how quickly such dangerous ideologies can spread between nations,” he said.

The President said most BIMSTEC member countries have large communities that depend on fishing for their livelihood, therefore it is important to safeguard them against undue competition arising from more sophisticated vessels fishing illegally in their territorial waters.

“We must therefore collectively establish mechanisms to prevent such incidents as well as overfishing and unregulated, unreported, and illegal fishing practices,” he said.

Developing nations are in need of improved international and intra-regional cooperation in the coming months and years to recover from losses caused by the pandemic.

“Early action against the pandemic helped avert mass loss of life with strong public health infrastructure,” Rajapaksa said, adding that 82 percent of Sri Lankans are fully vaccinated and 54 percent have received the booster dose.  

“As many other developing countries, the economic consequences of the pandemic were severe on Sri Lanka.The loss of tourism, remittances of expatriates, cost of healthcare programmes, provisions of welfare have combined and our historic debt service obligations create a challenging situation for Sri Lanka today,” he said.

President Rajapaksa appreciated the support of several BIMSTEC members.

“Enhanced cooperation between member states will be necessary not only for economic recovery but also for greater economic prosperity, better public health and improved regional resilience in the long term,” Rajapaksa said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that it is necessary to emphasise on regional security while announcing one million US dollars to the BIMSTEC Secretariat.