ISLAMABAD: Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena will pay a three-day state visit to Pakistan from Sunday.

This will be Mr Sirisena’s first visit to Pakistan, but since it comes at a time when Colombo is reviewing its foreign policy, analysts attach great importance to it.

The Lankan president will meet his counterpart, Mamnoon Hussain, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during the visit.

“A number of memorandums of understating and agreements of cooperation will be signed during the Sri Lankan president’s trip,” the Foreign Office said.

Mr Sirisena’s predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa was to visit Islamabad in August last year, but could not do so because of the PTI’s sit-in.

Pakistan and Sri Lanka have traditionally had a strong relationship based on defence cooperation under which the former had in the past provided military hardware to the latter to fight Tamil insurgents.

Like its regional ally China, Pakistan also defended Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council against allegations of abuses in the civil war.

Since Mr Sirisena’s election in January there is perceptible shift in Sri Lankan foreign policy towards India. Mr Sirisena made his first overseas visit to India, while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a return trip to Colombo last month.

Pakistan, officials say, would focus on building trade and economic relations with Sri Lanka.

Although bilateral trade has expanded over the past few years, there is still significant potential for that between the two countries, particularly after the Free Trade Area agreement 2005 became operational.

Furthermore, both sides had in the past expressed interest in strengthening cooperation in countering terrorism and drug and human trafficking, problems of asylum seekers and transnational crimes.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2015

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