FM's video conferencing to tackle issues abroad

With COVID- 19 raging worldwide, Sri Lanka's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has embarked on a new drive – video conferences with heads of Sri Lanka's diplomatic missions overseas. They have turned out to be more interesting than television talk shows.

Their mission – to discuss topics like genocide and economic diplomacy. Like during lotteries, the missions for this time-consuming exercise have been picked at random. In the process, three countries important to Sri Lanka for economic reasons have been left out. They a re The Netherlands, Pakistan and Malaysia. No reasons have been given nor asked by those responsible.

The first session focused entirely on "genocide" — the discussion lasting more than a record seven hours, according to insiders. Not surprisingly, even though the focus was on ‘strategic communication’ the Ministry spokesperson maintained stoic silence throughout.

With Addis Ababa saying that “There is no reference to genocide in this part of the world” to Riyadh adding that “There is only talk of Muslim Genocide in West Asia”, the discussion just went on and on with one of our Ambassadors butting in to say that “I am meeting all these important persons but I have nothing to tell them because I don’t get any response to my communications to the Ministry!” That to the man who is directing this new diplomatic foray and acted as moderat o r - Ravinatha Aryasinha, the Foreign Secretary.

The E u ro p e based Ambassador concerned went on such a long harangue, Aryasinha, the moderator pulled the plug or just muted the volume. Then there was our diplomat in Brasilia only saying how much he is trying to go around the South American continent, but not getting any support without mentioning a word about what his work was of relevance to "genocide."

From Colombo the comeback was even better with a senior Ministry official saying that "There is a proposal to open an Embassy in Chile!"

Brasilia was not in favour for obvious reasons. Our diplomat in New York, who had little to add as there’s little happening in the UN, took time to ponder about Samantha Power becoming the next Secretary of State under a Joe Biden administration in the United States. That would make her life difficult.

Then there were the newly appointed political ambassadors who made lengthy power-point presentations on their ‘vision.’ This was all capped by the diplomat in Beijing. When asked about ‘ negative coverage’ he replied, “We don’t have to worry about any media issues in China.”

Now to the second show, this time on Economic Diplomacy. Of course, as usual, the ministry hurriedly sent a list of 15 items for export promotion just hours before the discussion! More Embassies were added. This time too, there were exclusions. This one went on for almost 10 hours. With a lengthy account on WTO negotiations in Geneva along with a poignant presentation of market access in Bermuda followed by Havana saying, “Cuba is important for political reasons and not economic reasons” and wriggling out of the discourse.

As one source put it, there was also in play a game of “pass the ball”, when the diplomat in Ottawa was asked about what is being done about Sri

Lanka’s exports (as the numbers have been low for a while), the ball was immediately passed on to the Consulate in Toronto where the Consul deftly deflected it to an ill- prepared official who hemmed and hawed only to get blamed by Secre t a r y Aryasinha.

Then came a gem when another budding diplomat in Brussels, once again taking a good 30 minutes, to express strong displeasure at authorities in Colombo for not approving her proposal to advertise Sri Lanka on buses. This is when Belgium accounts for less than 1% of foreign tourists arriving in Sri Lanka, according to data obtained before the Easter attacks last year. To their credit, some political diplomats like the one in Berlin played a straight bat by trying to highlight some practical ideas to promote exports.