{"id":123780,"date":"2022-03-25T14:10:39","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T21:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=123780"},"modified":"2022-03-25T14:10:39","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T21:10:39","slug":"five-defence-agreements-signed-with-india-handunnetti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/03\/25\/five-defence-agreements-signed-with-india-handunnetti\/","title":{"rendered":"Five defence agreements signed with India: Handunnetti"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><em>Courtesy The Daily Mirror<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) today revealed that the government had entered into five defence agreements with India in line with the recently obtained US$1 billion credit facility, despite claims that no condition had been laid down in the credit line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Former JVP MP Sunil Handunnetti told a news conference that these agreements had been signed violating the due procedure prior to Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa&#8217;s visit to India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Basil on his return from India said there were no conditions pertaining to the US$1 billion credit line obtained from India. But, just before his visit, several agreements had been signed. These agreements had been signed with a covering approval as they had to be signed before Basil&#8217;s Indian visit. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his government should reveal their stance on Basil Rajapaksa&#8217;s statement and signing of these agreements,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said signing of these defence agreements is a clear threat to the nation&#8217;s security and added that this was betraying of sea, ground and aerospace pertaining to the national security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said agreements pertaining to Indian funded Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC), grant of three Dornier Maritime Surveillance aircraft to Sri Lanka and a 4,000 MT floating barge have been signed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mr. Handunnetti questioned as to why these security equipment were needed in a hurry when people were suffering in queues for essential goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;There was no need of these security equipment at all even during the war,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also revealed that Cabinet approval has been sought to make an emergency purchase of diesel from a South African Company for upto five years on unsolicited basis. (Ajith Siriwardana)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The Daily Mirror The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) today revealed that the government had entered into five defence agreements with India in line with the recently obtained US$1 billion credit facility, despite claims that no condition had been laid down in the credit line. Former JVP MP Sunil Handunnetti told a news conference that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123780","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=123780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}