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US-Sri Lanka consolidate relations covering key sectors, including defence and economic
Peace Corps returns to Sri Lanka after 26-year hiatus
Sri Lanka and the United States resolved to continue cooperation on maritime security aimed at a safe maritime domain in the Indian Ocean, including through activities undertaken under Sri Lanka’s tenure as Chair of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).
Sri Lanka also welcomed the planned arrival of the fourth High Endurance U.S. Coast Guard Cutter transferred through the U.S. Excess Defense Articles program and a King Air aircraft to strengthen Sri Lanka’s maritime domain awareness and respond to humanitarian and post-disaster needs, totaling $30.18 million.
The following is the text of joint statement issued in the wake of 5th Sri Lanka-USA Partnership Dialogue held in Washington: The United States and Sri Lanka convened the Fifth U.S.-Sri Lanka Partnership Dialogue on July 12, 2024, in Washington, D.C. to express their shared commitment to economic prosperity, security cooperation, sustainable development, democracy and human rights, and people-to-people exchanges. The meeting was co-chaired by Acting Under Secretary for Political Affairs of the U.S. Department of State John Bass and Foreign Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka Aruni Wijewardane. The United States and Sri Lanka reaffirmed their commitment to the bilateral relationship, firmly rooted in upholding shared democratic values and respect for national sovereignty, and expressed a desire to further strengthen the partnership.
The Sri Lanka delegation was led by Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Aruni Wijewardane and the USA side was led by Acting Under Secretary for Political Affairs of the U.S. Department of State John Bass.
The United States welcomed the signs of economic stabilization in Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka’s steadfast commitment to the IMF program and reforms, which will lay the groundwork for recovery, financial governance, and future growth. Sri Lanka expressed its sincere appreciation for U.S. economic assistance during the past crisis, totaling more than a quarter-billion dollars. The United States continues to support Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring and economic and governance reform agenda to promote sustainable growth.
Both delegations reiterated their intent to explore new opportunities to enhance market access, bilateral trade, investment, and tourism. The United States expressed its commitment to supporting Sri Lanka’s progress in its IMF program by encouraging private-sector investment, enhancing its capacity to combat corruption, and addressing food insecurity for vulnerable populations. The U.S. delegation welcomed the Sri Lankan government’s increased investment in the social protection network, including measures to support women through the Women’s Empowerment Act. Sri Lanka welcomed the role of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), which is committing $553 million to support the development of the West Container Terminal at the Port of Colombo, an investment that provides critical infrastructure and jobs. DFC continues to explore additional opportunities to invest in Sri Lanka. The delegations also welcomed continued discussions under the U.S.-Sri Lanka Trade and Investment Framework Agreement in the coming year, where they will discuss bilateral trade issues.
Both countries committed to continue working together to address climate change and other environmental challenges. The United States welcomed Sri Lanka’s goal to produce 70 percent of electricity from renewable energy by 2030 and to attain carbon neutrality by 2050. The United States is providing assistance under the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Sri Lanka Energy Program. Sri Lanka expressed appreciation for ongoing U.S. grant assistance to help meet these goals, including technical assistance to support energy sector reform and a pipeline of renewable energy projects. Sri Lanka appreciated U.S. support to achieve global climate financing targets and welcomed U.S. support on financing its energy transition as discussed during the COP 28 in 2023.
The United States expressed its intent to continue supporting the sustainable development of Sri Lanka through the U.S. Agency for International Development, including through programs to strengthen transparency, governance, and economic resilience; enhance environmental and climate resilience; and improve energy security and sustainability. This includes the announcement of USAID’s forthcoming five-year activity to foster inclusive and sustainable agriculture-led economic growth in Sri Lanka.
The U.S. delegation reaffirmed its commitment to promote school nutrition and education cooperation for Sri Lankan children in consultation with the Sri Lankan Government. Both sides recognized that these measures would facilitate Sri Lanka’s efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Sri Lanka appreciated the successful nutrition campaign conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)/Foreign Agricultural Service McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program PALAM/A project with Save the Children and the new five-year, $32.5 million project expansion to provide meals to about 200,000 students covered under Sri Lanka’s national school meal program.
Both delegations welcomed ongoing bilateral defense and security sector cooperation, including U.S. support for humanitarian demining and disaster relief and response, joint military engagements, cooperation on cyber security, and port security. The United States resolved to explore opportunities to increase support for Sri Lanka’s hydrographic mapping capabilities and training and development of personnel in this field. The United States also expressed gratitude to Sri Lanka for its participation and support in activities aimed at safety, security, and freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.
The United States welcomed steps taken by Sri Lanka to promote reconciliation and human rights and encouraged continued efforts on these issues. Sri Lanka apprised the United States of the recent developments on reconciliation and domestic mechanisms to uphold democracy and further good governance, the rule of law and the promotion and protection of human rights. The United States encouraged Sri Lanka to continue forward on these issues inclusively, incorporating input from stakeholders. The United States appreciated the passage of anti-corruption legislation and the release of government-held lands back to the original owners in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka.
Both delegations expressed strong support for ongoing cooperation between the two countries in education and culture. The delegations welcomed ongoing efforts to recognize and preserve Sri Lanka’s rich cultural heritage through the funding received from the United States over the last 23 years. The United States emphasized the value of educational exchanges, such as the Fulbright program, and expressed interest in working together to further expand opportunities for university partnerships, joint research endeavors, and overseas study and exchanges that would benefit both countries. The United States highlighted the launch of the U.S. Government’s Young South Asian Leadership Initiative, a regional leadership training program based out of Colombo. The delegations decided to continue collaboration on English Language teaching, teacher training, curriculum development, and other support to strengthen Sri Lanka’s education sector. The delegations lauded the return of the Peace Corps to Sri Lanka in 2024 after a 26-year hiatus.
The United States and Sri Lanka emphasized the importance of their 76-year partnership and reaffirmed their commitment to encourage progress in a broad range of areas, including in economy and development, anti-corruption, climate change, security cooperation, governance and human rights, and people-to-people exchange.
On 17 February, the Indian Navy posted a cheerful message on X.
“Welcome!” it wrote, greeting the Iranian warship Iris Dena as it steamed into the port of Visakhapatnam to join an international naval gathering.
Photographs showed sailors in crisp whites and a grey frigate gliding in the sea harbour on a clear day. The hashtags spoke of “Bridges of Friendship” and “United Through Oceans”.
Two weeks later the ship, carrying 130 sailors, lay at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. It had been torpedoed by a US submarine off Sri Lanka’s southern coast on 4 March.
Commissioned in 2021, the Dena was a relatively new vessel – a Moudge-class frigate of Iran’s Southern Fleet, which patrols the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman.
According to US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, the vessel “thought it was safe in international waters” but instead “died a quiet death”. Rescue teams from Sri Lanka have recovered at least 87 bodies. Only 32 sailors survived.
The sinking marks a dramatic widening of the war between America, Israel and Iran. And, though it occurred in international waters of the Indian Ocean and outside India’s jurisdiction, it is an awkward moment for Delhi.
“The war has come to our doorsteps. That is not a good thing,” says retired Vice Admiral Arun Kumar Singh.
For some strategists, the episode carries broader implications for India’s regional standing.
Indian strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney wrote on X that the US torpedoing of the Iranian warship in India’s “maritime neighbourhood” was “more than a battlefield episode” – calling it a “strategic embarrassment” for Delhi.
“By sinking a vessel returning from an Indian-hosted multilateral exercise, Washington effectively turned India’s maritime neighbourhood into a war zone, raising uncomfortable questions about India’s authority in its own backyard,” Chellaney wrote.
Just days before its destruction, the Dena had been a diplomatic guest of the Indian Navy.
The ship had travelled to Visakhapatnam, a sun-washed port city on India’s east coast, to participate in the International Fleet Review 2026 and Exercise Milan, a large multilateral naval exercise meant to showcase India’s growing maritime leadership.
Seventy-four countries and 18 warships took part in the events, which Delhi described as a demonstration of its ambition to become the Indian Ocean’s “preferedsecurity partner”.
Visiting ships at such multilateral exercises usually do not carry a full combat load of live munitions, unless scheduled for a live-fire drill, according to Chellaney. Even during the sea phase, when drills and live firing take place, ships carry only tightly controlled ammunition limited to the specific exercises.
Singh, an invitee to the event, recalls seeing the warship and its Iranian sailors in Visakhapatnam just days before its fate changed.
“I saw the boys marching in front of me,” he says of the Iranian naval contingent during the parade along the seafront, just 10m away. “All young people. I feel very sad.”
He says on 21 February, the assembled ships – including the Iranian vessel – sailed out for the sea phase of Exercise Milan, scheduled to run until 25 February.
“What happened next is less clear: the ship may have returned to port or peeled away after exercises. Either way, the waters where it was later sunk – off Galle in Sri Lanka – lie only two to three days’ sailing from India’s east coast,” Singh says. What the ship was doing in the 10-12 days in between is not clear.
Singh, who has commanded submarines, believes the sequence leading up to the attack was probably straightforward.
The US, he notes, tracks vessels across the world’s oceans. “They would have known exactly when the ship left and where it was heading,” he says. A fourth of America’s submarine fleet of 65-70 is at sea at any given time, according to analysts.
According to the Indian Navy, the Iranian warship had been operating about 20 nautical miles west of Galle – roughly 23 miles (37km) – in waters that fall under Sri Lanka’s designated search-and-rescue zone.
The attack, Singh says, appears to have involved a single Mark-48 torpedo, a heavyweight weapon carrying about 650 pounds of high explosive, capable of snapping a ship in two. Video footage suggests the submarine may have fired from 3-4km away, around 05:30 local time.
The aftermath was grim and swift.
The warship reportedly sank within two to three minutes, leaving little time for rescue. “It’s a miracle they managed to send an SOS,” Singh says, which was picked up by the Sri Lanka Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Colombo.
According to the Indian Navy, a distress call from the Iranian warship was picked up by Colombo in the early hours of 4 March, triggering a regional search-and-rescue effort.
The navy said in a statement that Sri Lanka’s navy began rescue operations first, while India moved to assist later.
The Indian Navy deployed a long-range maritime patrol aircraft to support the search and kept another aircraft with air-droppable life rafts on standby.
A naval vessel already operating nearby reached the area by late afternoon. Another ship, which sailed from the southern Indian port city of Kochi to join the effort, continues to comb the waters for survivors and debris.
Under the Second Geneva Convention, countries at war are required to take “all possible measures” to rescue wounded or shipwrecked sailors after a naval attack. In practice, however, this duty applies only if a rescue can be attempted without putting the attacking vessel in serious danger.
Singh says submarines are rarely able to help.
“Submarines don’t surface,” he says. “If you surface and give up your position, someone else can sink you.”
Singh suspects the speed of the sinking – and possibly sparse shipping in the area at the time – meant few nearby vessels could respond. “A ship breaking up that fast leaves almost no chance,” he says.
In a shooting war, Singh says, the legal position is blunt.
Fighting between the United States and Iran had been under way since 28 February, with claims that 17 Iranian naval vessels had already been destroyed.
“When a shooting war is on, any ship of a belligerent country becomes fair game,” he says.
Many questions remain. Why was the Iranian warship still in waters near Sri Lanka nearly two weeks after leaving India’s naval exercise? Was it heading home, or on another mission? And how long had the US submarine been tracking it before firing?
For Delhi, the episode is diplomatically awkward.
India has drawn closer to Washington on defence while maintaining long-standing political and economic ties with Tehran – a balancing act the war has made harder.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called broadly for “dialogue and diplomacy” to resolve conflicts, but has neither addressed the sinking of the Iranian vessel directly nor criticised the American strike.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the attack as “an atrocity at sea” and stressed that the frigate had been “a guest of India’s Navy”. Meanwhile Sri Lanka has taken control of another Iranian naval vessel off its coast after an engine failure forced it to seek port, a day after the US attack.
The episode has nonetheless sparked debate within India’s strategic community.
Kanwal Sibal, a veteran diplomat, argued that India’s responsibility may not be legal, but it is moral.
“The Iranian ship would not have been where it was had India not invited it to the Milan exercise,” he wrote on X. “A word of condolence at the loss of lives of those who were our invitees would be in order.”
Others like Chellaney have framed the issue in more strategic terms.
He described the strike as a blow to India’s maritime diplomacy. The torpedoing of the frigate in “India’s maritime backyard”, he argued, punctured Delhi’s carefully cultivated image as a “preferred security partner” in the Indian Ocean.
“In one torpedo strike, American hard power has punctured India’s carefully cultivated soft power,” says Chellaney.
As the debate gathered pace in strategic circles, India’s official response remained cautious.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on X that he had held a telephone conversation with Araghchi, and also posted a photograph of a meeting with Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh at a foreign policy summit in Delhi.
For military historian Srinath Raghavan, the legal position is clear: once the Iranian vessel left India’s shores, Delhi had no formal responsibility.
The strategic message, however, is harder to ignore.
“First, the spreading geography of this war. Second, India’s limited ability to manage its fallout,” says Raghavan.
“Indeed, the US Navy has fired a shot across the bow aimed at all regional players, including India.”
[BBC]
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Heat Index at ‘Caution Level’ in the Sabaragamuwa province and, Colombo, Gampaha, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Hambanthota and Monaragala districts
Warm Weather Advisory Issued by the Natural Hazards Early Warning Centre of the Department of Meteorology at 3.30 p.m. on 06 March 2026, valid for 07 March 2026.
The public are warned that the Heat index, the temperature felt on human body is likely to increase up to ‘Caution level’ at some places in the Sabaragamuwa province and in Colombo, Gampaha, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Hambantota and Monaragala districts.
The Heat Index Forecast is calculated by using relative humidity and maximum temperature and is the condition that is felt on your body. This is not the forecast of maximum temperature. It is generated by the Department of Meteorology for the next day period and prepared by using global numerical weather prediction model data.
Effect of the heat index on human body is mentioned in the above table and it is prepared on the advice of the Ministry of Health and Indigenous Medical Services.
ACTION REQUIRED
Job sites: Stay hydrated and takes breaks in the shade as often as possible.
Indoors: Check up on the elderly and the sick.
Vehicles: Never leave children unattended.
Outdoors: Limit strenuous outdoor activities, find shade and stay hydrated.
Dress: Wear lightweight and white or light-colored clothing.
Note: In addition, please refer to advisories issued by the Disaster Preparedness & Response Division, Ministry of Health in this regard as well. For further clarifications please contact 011-7446491
Latest News
Prompt solutions will be provided for the salary anomalies prevailing within the teacher and principal services — PM
Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya stated that the government has paid close attention to the salary anomalies prevailing within the teacher and principal services and that prompt solutions will be provided following extensive discussions held with trade unions.
The Prime Minister made these remarks while responding to questions raised in Parliament on Friday (06).
Presenting data on existing vacancies in the education sector, the Prime Minister explained the current situation.
There are 903 vacancies existing in the Sri Lanka Education Administrative Service (SLEAS) and 3,790 vacancies in Sri Lanka Principals’ Service (SLPS).
In order to fill the vacancies which still remain due to various reasons, including selected officers not accepting appointments after the examinations and interviews conducted since 2021, interviews are scheduled to be held in the second week of March 2026.
Further, in order to fill the vacancies for the years 2021 and 2025, competitive examinations will be conducted in the future with the approval of the Public Service Commission.
At present, entry into the Principals’ Service is considered as a new recruitment. As a solution to the salary-related issue arising in this regard, a new Cabinet paper is being prepared seeking approval to consider appointments to the Principals’ Service as a promotion, thereby enabling appropriate salary conversion.
The Prime Minister also emphasized that sustainable solutions are required not only for salary issues in the education sector but also for salary-related concerns in several other sectors. Accordingly, the government plans to appoint a new Salary Commission. Through this commission, the government expects to provide lasting solutions to the issues faced by teachers and principals within this year.
In accordance with the service minute of the Principals’ Service, several training programmes have been made mandatory for the professional development of principals.
These include, Induction training at the beginning of service, capacity development training prior to promotion to Grade II and Grade I, and periodic awareness programmes conducted at provincial and zonal levels.
The Prime Minister further stated that discussions are undertaking with the Department of Management Services regarding the proposals submitted by principals’ associations. Based on the responses received, the government is prepared to take the necessary steps through the Cabinet of Ministers.
[Prime Minister’s Media Division]
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