Direct flights between Lanka, Nepal soon

Plans are under way to have direct flights between Sri Lanka and Nepal soon, Foreign Secretary Dr. Palitha Kohona said.

Dr. Kohona in Kathmandu, Nepal for a three day visit last week asked by Gopal Khanal and Lok Mani Rai, if there was any talk of establishing a direct flight connection between Sri Lanka and Nepal, said: “That was something we discussed at almost every meeting.

The direct flight will happen very soon. We are aware that SriLankan Airlines is now going into the final details of the establishment of direct flight so that the connectivity between the two countries will be strengthened further.

There are already around 40,000 Sri Lankan tourists who visit Nepal every year. With the establishment of the direct air link, we are confident that this number will go up further. We also hope that this will encourage Nepalis to visit Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has some of the oldest Buddhist shrines in the world and Nepalis will be able to come directly to Sri Lanka to visit these in the future.

Asked how Sri Lanka was engaged in developing Lumbini as a site of pilgrimage for Buddhists, Dr. Kohona said Sri Lanka was building a pilgrim rest in Kapilvastu.

“We hope to complete the construction very soon. Whatever activity that is undertaken on a multilateral basis to develop Kapilvastu as a place of pilgrimage will be supported by Sri Lanka. We recognize that this is one of the most important sites for Buddhists,” he said.

Asked what political issues he discussed with Nepali officers and leaders, he said we did talk about the way in which Sri Lanka resolved its problems.

“The world thinks that it was a problem with the Tamils of Sri Lanka. But it is very important to realize that from the very beginning the Sri Lankan government made a distinction between the Tamils and the LTTE.

The LTTE was a terrorist organization and eventually it was decided that we were going to deal with it in a military manner. But we kept normal Tamils away from that.

The Tamils are part of our population and we were going to deal with them in a political manner. That contributed significantly to our success because many Tamils did not support the LTTE. They were very happy to run away from the LTTE and come under government protection. The LTTE increasingly found itself isolated from the population it purported to represent.

“We tried to negotiate with the LTTE over and over so that it could be brought back into the democratic process. But it was intransigent and so we could not wait indefinitely. We could also not tolerate a terrorist organization that was actually controlling territory within Sri Lanka,” Dr. Kohona said.

Courtesy: Kantipur Online