Sri Lanka sees no reason for re-opening talks on Katchatheevu that Bharat gave up 50 years ago, said Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry in the first official reaction yet to the recent remarks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.
The party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is expected to win general elections that start on April 19, has flagged the issue of Bharatiya fishermen discontented after a 1976 pact between the neighbours barred them from the waters around the island.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ali Sabry said, ‘This is a problem discussed and resolved 50 years ago and there is no necessity to have further discussions on this’.
‘I don’t think it will come up’, he said, adding that no one had yet raised the question of a change in the status of the Island, located 33 km (21 miles) off Bharat’s coast in the Palk Strait that divides the neighbours.
His comments came after Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party made the 285-acre (115-hectare) island an election campaign issue by accusing the opposition Congress party of having callously given it away.
The BJP seeks to make election inroads in the coastal state of Tamil Nadu facing the island after failing to win any of the southern state’s 39 seats in Bharat’s 545-member parliament in the last election.
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