Sri Lankan Ambassador to China Palitha Kohona on Monday (March 22) dismissed claims that China and Sri Lanka are renegotiating the Hambantota port (Hambantota) lease agreement.
According to Hong Kong‘s South China Morning Post, Kohona responded to previous news that Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa was reconsidering the Sino-Sri Lankan agreement on the Hambantota port by saying, “No, I think it’s absolute garbage.”
Kohona added, “If there are negotiations, they are very secret and no one will say anything to you. Both sides would ‘whisper’ to each other so that no one else could hear.”
China’s Foreign Ministry has also previously said that reports of China and Sri Lanka renegotiating the Hambantota port agreement are not factually correct. The Chinese side also said that the Hambantota port concession agreement is a mutually beneficial and win-win agreement reached between China and Sri Lanka through “friendly negotiations” on the basis of “equality and voluntariness”.
In December 2017, the then Sri Lankan government officially leased the strategic Hambantota port to China for 99 years because of its inability to repay the Chinese company’s debts.
Sri Lanka’s Ceylon Today newspaper reported last month that Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Gunawardena had said in an interview that the 99-year lease of Hambantota port can be renewed for another 99 years after it expires under the agreement between China and Sri Lanka. He added that it was “a mistake” made by the previous government.
Western officials and analysts have repeatedly criticized the Communist regime for providing development funds to developing countries, including Sri Lanka, in the form of unaffordable loans that have led them into a debt trap.
The South China Morning Post reported that Sri Lanka’s ambassador to China, Kohona, denied this claim. He said, “I say very responsibly and unreservedly that China’s debt is less than 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s total debt and we are not in a trap.”
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