JOIN USIndia inks civil nuclear deal with Lanka
India on Monday inked a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Sri Lanka, making the first breakthrough with the new government in the island nation.
Both China and Pakistan have been building strategic assets in Sri Lanka in recent years, giving jitters to New Delhi.
Parleys between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lanka’s new President Maithripala Sirisena in New Delhi on Monday ended with both sides signing four agreements, including one for cooperation on peaceful uses of nuclear energy. They also agreed to expand defence and security cooperation.
“The bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation is yet another demonstration of our mutual trust,” said Modi, addressing mediapersons jointly with Sirisena, who defeated Mahinda Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka’s presidential elections last month to assume office.
Sirisena arrived in New Delhi late on Sunday to commence a four-day visit, his maiden foreign tour after taking over in Colombo.
According to the Ministry of External Affairs, the agreement will facilitate cooperation between India and Sri Lanka “in transfer and exchange of knowledge and expertise, sharing of resources, capacity building and training of personnel in peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”
It envisages cooperation in use of radioisotopes, nuclear safety, radiation safety, nuclear security, radioactive waste management and nuclear and radiological disaster mitigation and environmental protection.
“This is the first such agreement Sri Lanka has signed. It opens up new avenues for cooperation, including in areas like agriculture and healthcare,” said Modi, who also made public his plan to visit Colombo next month.
Deccan Herald first reported last Saturday that Sirisena’s meeting with Modi might see both sides moving towards signing the nuclear agreement.
The deal also paves the way for New Delhi helping build small nuclear power plants in Sri Lanka using Pressurised Heavy-Water Reactors indigenously developed in India.
It also provides for bilateral cooperation in research and development works exploring power generation using thorium. Indian nuclear scientists may help their Sri Lankan counterparts conduct feasibility studies on use of thorium deposits, which are found in abundance along the southern coastal belt of the island nation, to generate atomic power.
To pre-empt Sri Lanka allowing China and Pakistan to building atomic power plants in Sri Lanka, New Delhi had started talks with Colombo in 2012 for a comprehensive agreement on bilateral civil nuclear cooperation. Indian and Sri Lankan officials held two more rounds of talks in 2014.
India and Sri Lanka also signed a programme for cultural cooperation and a work-plan for 2014-15 under the MoU on Cooperation in the field of Agriculture. The two countries also signed an MoU enabling Sri Lanka to participate in the Nalanda University project in India.