Sri Lankan president to visit India from June 8

“The visit (of Rajapaksa) is planned for June 8 next,” External Affairs Minister S M Krishna said, after his meeting with his Sri Lankan counterpart, G L Peiris on Sunday.

Both Krishna and Peiris are in the Iranian capital to attend the G 15 summit. Rajapaksa will also attend the summit on Monday and take over the chairmanship of the 17-member group from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezad.

During their meeting, Krishna and Peiris discussed the issue of resettlement of Tamils, displaced by the conflict between the Lankan Army and the LTTE.

“We have impressed upon them the urgency of settling the Sri Lankan Tamil minority issue once and for all so that they could concentrate on the future. The Sri Lankan foreign minister assured me that they were making efforts in that direction,” Krishna said.

Peiris also told Krishna that Sri Lankan government accorded the highest priority to the resettlement of displaced Tamils. “There were about 300,000 IDPs and the number has now gone down to less than 50,000. So we have made considerable progress,” he said.
Krishna and Peiris had last met in Bhutanese capital Thimpu, on the sidelines of the SAARC summit.