{"id":90423,"date":"2019-06-16T14:12:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-16T21:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=90423"},"modified":"2019-06-16T14:12:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-16T21:12:21","slug":"sofas-contentious-clauses-up-for-discussion-during-visit-of-us-secretary-of-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/06\/16\/sofas-contentious-clauses-up-for-discussion-during-visit-of-us-secretary-of-state\/","title":{"rendered":"SOFA\u2019s contentious clauses up for discussion during visit of US Secretary of State"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>by Zacki Jabbar Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The proposed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the US that had seen opposition from some Sri Lankan political parties, would also come up for discussion to plug the contentious clauses, during the upcoming visit of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Colombo, senior government sources said yesterday.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pompeo is scheduled to visit India, Sri Lanka, Japan and Korea from June 24 to 30, officials said.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Secretary Pompeo expressed his desire to visit Sri Lanka when he spoke to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe over the telephone, shortly after the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) carried out suicide bomb explosions at&nbsp; three churches and three luxury hotels in Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa, on Easter Sunday, which killed a total of 258 people and injured around 500.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Public Enterprise Minister Lakshman Kiriella said that&nbsp; SOFA was first discussed&nbsp; during the Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency and it was ironic that it was the Podujana Peramuna that was now leading opposition protests.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was not the first time that Rajapaksa had&nbsp; opposed the very agreements or proposals&nbsp; that his government had introduced, now that he was in the opposition, Kiriella added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Zacki Jabbar Courtesy The Island The proposed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the US that had seen opposition from some Sri Lankan political parties, would also come up for discussion to plug the contentious clauses, during the upcoming visit of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Colombo, senior government sources said yesterday. [&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-90423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90423","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=90423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}