Advertisement
Belt and Road Initiative
China

On sidelines of UN General Assembly, Sri Lankan president calls Aukus ‘a mistake’ and rejects fears over China

  • President Ranil Wickremesinghe also derided the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ as an artificial framework with an inconsistent definition
  • He also countered recent claims by New Delhi that Beijing was sending ships to Sri Lanka to spy on India

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
20
Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe says the Aukus alliance is “a strategic misstep”. Photo: Reuters
Khushboo Razdanin New York
Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday declared the Aukus security pact between Australia, Britain and the US “a mistake” while rejecting any concerns over Beijing’s perceived influence on his debt-ridden island nation.
Advertisement
“It is a military alliance moved against one country – China,” he said at an event 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, describing the alliance as unnecessary. “I don’t think it was needed.”

02:12

Chinese research ship docks at Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port amid heightened regional tensions

Chinese research ship docks at Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port amid heightened regional tensions

Created in September 2021, Aukus is described by the governments of its member states as a security partnership involving information and technology sharing on nuclear-powered submarines, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and additional undersea capabilities.

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

“Nobody knows what’s Indo-Pacific,” 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.”

The Sri Lankan leader said the Sino-US rivalry originated in the Western Pacific but had now spread to both the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific.

Advertisement