{"id":118867,"date":"2021-10-04T16:51:09","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T23:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=118867"},"modified":"2021-10-04T16:51:09","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T23:51:09","slug":"indian-foreign-secretary-shringla-calls-on-prime-minister-rajapaksa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/10\/04\/indian-foreign-secretary-shringla-calls-on-prime-minister-rajapaksa\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Foreign Secretary Shringla Calls on Prime Minister Rajapaksa"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong>Prime Minister\u2019s Media Unit<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Foreign Secretary of India Harsh\nVardhan Shringla called on Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa at Temple Trees\nthis morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the outset, Secretary Shringla\nconveyed the very personal greetings\u201d of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi\nand the best wishes of External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the meeting, the two\ndelegations discussed a number of sectors of mutual cooperation, including the\nfurther strengthening of bilateral relations, ongoing projects, tourism and the\npromotion of Buddhist ties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prime Minister Rajapaksa appreciated\nPrime Minister Modi\u2019s initiative to promote Buddhist ties. Secretary Shringla\nsaid it was a priority area of Prime Minister Modi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last year, during the virtual\nbilateral summit between the two prime ministers, the Indian Prime Minister\nannounced a $15 million grant for the promotion of Buddhist ties that aimed to\ndeepen people-to-people linkages between the two countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Secretary Shringla said India is\nalso looking forward to receiving the first pilgrims flight, from Sri Lanka, to\nthe Kushinagar Airport after it was upgraded as an international airport. This\nwas also a request made by Prime Minister Modi during the virtual summit last\nyear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another topic of discussion centered\naround the resumption of tourism. With the vaccine drives in both countries\nprogressing well, Secretary Shringla spoke of the importance of resuming\nconnectivity. India has been Sri Lanka\u2019s top source of tourists with inbound\ntourism from India making up about 18% of total tourists arrivals in\npre-COVID-19 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Indian Foreign Secretary is in\nSri Lanka on a four-day official visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prime Minister\u2019s Media Unit Foreign Secretary of India Harsh Vardhan Shringla called on Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa at Temple Trees this morning. At the outset, Secretary Shringla conveyed the very personal greetings\u201d of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the best wishes of External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar. During the meeting, the two delegations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}