RECEPTION FOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS Govt. committed to rebuilding north: Jaliya

The Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United States Jaliya Wickramasuriya said the Government of Sri Lanka was spending about $1 billion a year to rebuild the north, and it has launched an ambitious reconciliation program to right any past wrongs and achieve a new dialogue and understanding among all communities.

Ambassador Jaliya Wickramasuriya hosted a reception at his residence recently for a group of foreign correspondents, prompting a discussion regarding events in Sri Lanka since the end of the conflict against terrorism nearly three years ago.

The reception was the first in 2012, of the National Press Club’s Foreign International Correspondents Committee’s “Embassy Nights,” a series of meetings with ambassadors in Washington to discuss pressing international issues.

The correspondents from Al Jazeera, The Press Trust of India (PTI), Kyodo News, Reuters, Bloomberg and Mainchi Shimbun of Japan, Voice of America and several other travel and environmental writers also participated.

“Today we have a strong economy and the future looks bright for all Sri Lankans. We believe that such a political solution will be the key to stability in the future, especially when combined with reconciliation and economic development.” Mr. Wickramasuriya said.

The Sri Lankan Ambassador also extended an open invitation to the correspondents to visit Sri Lanka and see for themselves the progress that had been made since the May 2009 end of the LTTE conflict.

The correspondents asked about a variety of issues that post-conflict Sri Lanka had experienced, including a question about President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s political popularity.

”We enforce our human trafficking laws, and our position in the State Department’s annual trafficking report has improved to an upper tier that puts us above some other countries in our region and on the same level as countries like Japan, Singapore

and India,” he replied.