{"id":90883,"date":"2019-06-29T16:11:31","date_gmt":"2019-06-29T23:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=90883"},"modified":"2019-06-29T16:11:31","modified_gmt":"2019-06-29T23:11:31","slug":"acsa-and-sofa-could-eventually-result-in-sl-being-subservient-to-the-us-kohona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/06\/29\/acsa-and-sofa-could-eventually-result-in-sl-being-subservient-to-the-us-kohona\/","title":{"rendered":"ACSA and SOFA could eventually result in SL being subservient to the US \u2013 Kohona"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Steve A. Morrell Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
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At the seminar \u2013 (L-R): Tamara Kunanayakam, Mayura Gunawansa, President, OPA Eng. Nissanka Perera, Dr. Palitha Kohona, Eng. Saman Warusawithana, President-elect and Eng. Nissanka Senarath, OPA, Secretary, OPA.(Pic by Dharmasena Welipitiya)
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Asserting that the two contentious agreements with the US were disadvantages to Sri Lanka, a top former diplomat warned that ACSA (Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement) and SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) would influence the country to the extent that US hegemony could eventually result in the Sri Lanka government being subservient to the US.
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Both the government and the Opposition did not seem able to understand the implications and ramifications of the two Agreements, said Dr. Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka\u2019s former Permanent Representative to the UN.
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“Sri Lanka would be within the vortex of US influence and would not be able to disentangle itself, with the end result that the US will have all options open, and if it wished, could even invade Sri Lanka,” he cautioned.
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Dr. Kohana was the keynote speaker at a seminar convened by the Organization of Professional Associations (OPA) last week on the US agreements with the government of Sri Lanka and their validity within context of the US government\u2019s push for mutual defence understanding between both countries.
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Referring to the ACSA in particular, he noted that the contents of the Agreement were not known to the public.
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In response to a query from the media on his knowledge of the US agreement why it was that he did not raise those objections before the agreement was signed, Kohana said it had been signed in a surreptitiously.
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He said there were more than 900 bilateral agreements Sri Lanka was a signatory to including different cultural and free trade agreements with countries like India, Singapore and Pakistan. Most of them were heavily partial to those countries. India benefited to the tune of some USD 5 billion in trade between the two countries. Indian exports amounted to around USD 4.5 billion, but Sri Lanka\u2019s exports were merely USD 500,000, he pointed out.
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Free trade with Singapore was also one- sided. Singapore did not produce petroleum, but it was one of Sri Lanka\u2019s main suppliers of the commodity. Pakistan did not come into the equation because of limited trade between both countries, Kohana explained.
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Tamara Kunanayakam, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN Office in Geneva, said the two Agreements had ben discussed and planned for a long time.
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“We were used to bombs going off, and we knew it was the LTTE. This is something very different. It has never happened the way it did on Easter Sunday. This is something that has woken people up. The Prime Minister himself said there was an external intervention”, she said.
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The 2018 document of the Pentagon focused on Russia and China as the main enemy. It was in that context that Sri Lanka had become important to them as the war against China was going to be maritime, primarily. In that context, the Americans had now shifted their focus to the Indo Pacific region, Kunanayakam further said.
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Sri Lanka is important because of its strategic location and its maritime link between these oceans. The Americans did not turn up from nowhere. They had been studying it. That was not really new. SOFA was only an amendment to an earlier agreement signed in 1995. There might have been other agreements, she continued.
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During President J. R. Jayewardene\u2019s time, JR and Rajiv Gandhi agreed that Trincomalee would not be used by an external power. And that the VOA (Voice of America) Station would not be used against US interests, Kunanayakam, said.
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President OPA Eng. Nissanka Perera introduced the speakers at the event. Attorney Mayura Gunawansa was also on the panel of speakers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Steve A. Morrell Courtesy The Island At the seminar \u2013 (L-R): Tamara Kunanayakam, Mayura Gunawansa, President, OPA Eng. Nissanka Perera, Dr. Palitha Kohona, Eng. Saman Warusawithana, President-elect and Eng. Nissanka Senarath, OPA, Secretary, OPA.(Pic by Dharmasena Welipitiya) Asserting that the two contentious agreements with the US were disadvantages to Sri Lanka, a top former […]<\/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-90883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90883","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=90883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}