Mangala’s proposal to shut down Embassy in Iraq shot down at cabinet

Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera faced strong resistance from his cabinet colleagues towards his proposal to shut down Sri Lanka’s diplomatic mission in Bagdhad at the weekly ministerial meeting yesterday, Daily FT learns.

After heated exchanges during the meeting, President Maithripala Sirisena decided to defer the decision to shut down the Lankan Embassy in Baghdad pending further review, sources told Daily FT.

Industry and Commerce Minister Rishard Bathiudeen raised major objections to Minister Samaraweera’s cabinet proposal, saying Iraq was the fifth largest importer of Ceylon tea and had a demand for skilled migrant labour.

Challenging Samaraweera’s proposal, Minister Bathiudeen insisted that this was the time for Sri Lanka to expand its ties in the Middle East. He asserted that despite the problems in Iraq, the country had continued to import tea and skilled labour from Sri Lanka. 

The Minister of Industries noted that 90 percent of trade with Iraq was tea, and warned that the shutdown of the formal diplomatic mission in that country could adversely affect the tea trade.



Several other Ministers including Thalatha Athukorale, Sarath Amunugama, Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, Rajitha Senaratne, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Faizer Mustapha also followed Bathiudeen’s lead and voiced their opposition to the shutdown of the embassy in Baghdad.

Minister Bathiudeen insisted that, if the cabinet proposal was going to be approved, that a minute be included in the paper that he had strongly opposed the moves.

Following the heated arguments, the President agreed to defer the decision to shut down the embassy.

While it was not immediately clear why Minister Samaraweera was recommending the shutdown of the Sri Lankan mission in Baghdad, sources told Daily FT that the Ministry was concerned with continuing instability in Iraq, including the rise of ISIS in some regions of the Middle Eastern country. Security of embassy staff and security related expenses the Government was compelled to incur to sustain the mission may have been at the heart of the recommendation, the sources said. The last Sri Lankan Ambassador to serve in Baghdad was Sumit Nakandala, who ended his tenure there in 2014. The embassy was shut down after the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and reopened in 2012.

In 2013, Iraq imported more than 22000 MT of Ceylon Tea at $87 million, which was 97% of total trade between both countries which stood at $90 million. Iraq was also the fifth largest buyer of Ceylon Tea in 2013, but rose to be the fourth largest tea buyer by 2014, purchasing $90 million worth of Ceylon Tea.