‘China’s Peaceful Development and its National Defence Policy’

It gives me great pleasure to visit Sri Lanka and meet with all the friends here. First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my Sri Lankan friends for your kind invitation and gracious hospitality. On behalf of the Chinese government, the Chinese people and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, I’d like to take this opportunity to extend our sincere greetings and good wishes to the Sri Lankan government, the Sri Lanka people and the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.

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Militarization, development and NAM

As NAM deliberated intensely on nuclear disarmament, unilateral sanctions, the non-politicization of human rights and a host of other issues at its recent 16th Heads of State and Government Summit in Tehran, sections of the international media broke the news that ‘US arms transfers to other countries tripled last year to $ 66.3 billion, giving America a market share of 80 percent.’ US arms sales thus skyrocketed even as its economy and those of the Western world registered distressing recessionary trends.

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Golden opportunity for tourism industry

The decision of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) to offer Kalpitiya (Puttalam), Kuchchaveli (Eastern Coast), Passikuda (Batticaloa), Dedduwa Lake and land near the Yala National Park for development with the approval of the government is indeed a golden opportunity for the tourism industry to thrive.

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Clarifying statistics on Rehabilitation

One of the few people who actually reads this column seriously drew my attention to what seemed inaccuracies when I last wrote about the detained. One point was my mentioning being asked to monitor implementation of the Interim Recommendations of the LLRC. He had thought the Committee looking into the LLRC Recommendations was composed only of bureaucrats, and thought I must have been referring to my task of convening the Task Force on the Human Rights Action Plan.

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