Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Monday, 17 August 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Sri Lanka’s foreign policy has regained its humanitarian features under the present Government after years of erratic foreign policy, one-time Mass Communication Minister Imthiaz Bakeer Markar said.
Addressing a series of meetings in the Matara District on Friday, Bakeer Markar said the present Foreign Minister, Mangala Samaraweera, strongly believes in unity in diversity and it was his conviction to keep to this concept that had helped put the present government’s foreign policy in the right perspective and on a correct path.
He said Samaraweera had understood the aspirations of all communities living in Sri Lanka and had been working towards forging unity among Sri Lanka’s different communities in a bid to make Sri Lanka a strong nation in the community of nations.
In sharp contrast to this approach, the opposition UPFA, he said, was causing rifts among communities, inciting hatred and suspicions through false propaganda that the UNP had signed secret deals with the Tamil National Alliance.
Bakeer Markar said the foreign policy of the previous Government was insensitive to the aspirations of the people of this country.
“When world leaders, including Barack Obama, the president of the United States, a strong ally of Israel, were condemning the extremist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s settlement building activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa who claimed to be the champion of the Palestinian cause made a State visit to Israel, thus endorsing all the wrongdoings of the Zionist state.”
Bakeer Markar said the new Government was taking its foreign policy on the path of non-alignment to any particular world power, drawing strength from the Government’s commitment to uphold universal principle of justice and good governance.
Bakeer Markar recalled how in 1951, the first Finance Minister of Independent Ceylon J.R. Jayewardene spoke bravely and eloquently for a free Japan in San Francisco, earning the respect and goodwill of the international community. He placed his confidence that Foreign Minister Samaraweera and a future UNP-led Government will be true to Sri Lanka’s long heritage in conducting foreign relations on the principles of justice and friendship.
