Prez calls US-led alliance against China ‘mistake’

President Ranil Wickremesinghe has declared strategic tripartite Aukus security pact, involving Australia, Britain and the US, ‘a mistake’ while dismissing concerns over Chinese influence on Sri Lanka.

Wickremesinghe described Aukus as a military alliance moved against one country, namely China. The President said so at an event on Monday (18) hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

“I think it’s a strategic misstep. I think they made a mistake,” Wickremesinghe added, questioning its necessity. “I don’t think it was necessary.”

Wickremesinghe laughed off the term “Indo-Pacific”, calling the recently-coined geostrategic zone an “artificial framework”.

“Nobody knows what’s Indo-Pacific is,” he said. “For some people, the Indo-Pacific ends on the western boundary of India, others take it into Africa, and some end up with Western Pacific, others go to South Pacific.”

Commenting on the anticipated expansion of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), Wickremesinghe said “as far as the Indian Ocean is concerned, we don’t want any military activity” and that most countries in the region “will not want NATO anywhere close by”.

Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port has long been cited in discussion around China’s lending practices along with accusations of “debt-trap diplomacy” but in his address on Monday, Wickremesinghe accused the West of having a scant understanding of how the Indian Ocean region operates.

The President rejected reports that Colombo was letting Beijing operate a military base in Sri Lanka. He said the Hambantota harbour was a commercial port run by Chinese state-owned China Merchants Group, and that the security of the port lay with the Sri Lanka Navy.

He also countered recent claims made by New Delhi that Beijing was sending ships to Sri Lanka to spy on India.

“There are no spy ships in Sri Lanka. I don’t know if anyone can establish a spy ship,” Wickremesinghe said, describing them as “research vessels” that had been visiting for the past 10 years under an agreement between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Sri Lanka’s national aquatic research agency.