Prime Minister urges protection of undersea cables, says current laws inadequate

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe urged Indian Ocean countries to pay special attention to the protection of undersea communication cables, claiming that the existing laws were insufficient for this purpose.

"Undersea cables were not given adequate importance when the UNCLOS was signed," he said while attending the Indian Ocean Conference which he chaired in Maldives yesterday (Sept 3).

While warning that the interference of undersea cables could adversely impact fields such as communication and financial systems, Mr. Wickremesinghe cited dialogues and negotiations as a solution to reduce tensions in the region.

The Prime Minister also cautioned that small countries face the risk of being affected due to adverse economic policies which could arise since the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organisation would cease to function in December.

This, he said "could mean that global trade rules and protocols that took so many years to develop will become unenforceable and thus essentially defunct."

Further, Mr. Wickremesinghe called for strong domestic counter terrorism programmes together with regional co-operation in order to defeat what he said was a "growing transitional trend of modern terrorism" faced in the region.

"After the setbacks in West Asia, the ISIS has turned its focus in South Asia," he noted while citing the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka and similar attacks in Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia recently as examples for such threats.

This year's Indian Ocean Conference was organised by the Indian Foundation, the Maldivian government, and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore.