NEW DELHI: Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Wednesday assured defence minister Rajnath Singh that his country would "never allow its territory to be used for any activities inimical to India's security interests", repeating in Colombo the pledge he first gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year.
The assurance came on the second day of Singh's three-day visit, the first by an Indian defence minister to the island nation since K C Pant, defence minister in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet, travelled there in 1988.
Sri Lanka's ports have been the sharpest irritant in the relationship for four years running. The Chinese space and missile tracking ship Yuan Wang 5 berthed at Hambantota in August 2022 over India's objections. The research vessel Shi Yan 6, described by Beijing as being on a scientific mission, docked at Colombo in October 2023.
Colombo barred foreign research vessels from its waters from January 2024. Announced as a one-year measure, the moratorium has stayed in force. India and the US had flagged that such ships map the seabed and monitor missile and satellite activity across the region.
Hambantota itself passed to a Chinese state-run operator on a 99-year lease in 2017, after Colombo struggled to service the loans raised to build it. The Chinese-funded Colombo Port City remains the other pressure point on India's radar.
Singh, in turn, pitched India as the neighbourhood's first responder. India considered assistance to Sri Lanka "not a favour, but a responsibility", he said, and would continue to provide it.
Dissanayake thanked New Delhi for the relief mounted under Operation Sagar Bandhu during Cyclone Ditwah and for the rehabilitation package that followed, which covered reconstruction across several parts of the island.
"India will always stand firmly with Sri Lanka whenever the island nation faces a crisis," Singh had said a day earlier, addressing the Indian diaspora in Colombo.
The two sides described themselves as "civilisational twins, close neighbours and maritime partners", and pledged to work jointly for the safety, security, peace and prosperity of the region.
Sri Lanka sits astride the sea lanes that carry the bulk of the Indian Ocean's east-west traffic. That places it at the centre of India's Neighbourhood First policy, the newer MAHASAGAR framework for maritime cooperation and the Colombo Security Conclave, which also groups Bangladesh, Maldives and Mauritius.
