COLOMBO: Former Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who played a key role in engineering the electoral defeat of former Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, is to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of an international Hindu-Buddhist conference to be held in New Delhi between September 3 and 5, informed sources told Express here.
Modi will inaugurate the conference on “Global Hindu Buddhist Initiative on Conflict Avoidance and Environment Consciousness” organized by the pro-BJP Vivekananda International Foundation, the Tokyo Foundation and the International Buddhist Confederation. The invitees to the conference are from Sri Lanka, Japan, Thailand and Mongolia.
Hailing from Vadnagar, an ancient Buddhist center in Gujarat, Modi is interested in using Buddhism and its message of peace to spread India’ influence in Buddhist countries. Significantly, one of the aims of the New Delhi conference is to discuss terrorism, especially religious terrorism. Sri Lanka has just emerged from a 30 year war against terrorism and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga had been in the forefront of the confrontation from 1995 to 2005.