COLOMBO (AFP) — Sri Lanka refused permission to the United States to station two of its warplanes at a civilian airport in the island’s south in early March, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Friday.
The request was turned down to maintain Sri Lanka’s neutrality and ensure its territory was not used for any military purpose that could help or hinder either side, he told parliament.
The Indian Ocean nation was drawn into the consequences of the war when US forces torpedoed an Iranian frigate off its coast in March.
“They wanted to bring two warplanes armed with eight anti-ship missiles from a base in Djibouti to Mattala International Airport from 4 to 8 March, and we said ‘no’,” Dissanayake said.
He said the US made the request on 26 February. Iran made a similar request on the same day for three of its warships, returning from India after a naval exercise, to make a port call.
“We were still considering the Iranian request to bring the three ships to Colombo from 9 to 13 March. Had we said ‘yes’ to Iran, we would have had to say ‘yes’ to the US, too,” he said.
“But we didn’t. We are steadfastly maintaining our position of neutrality,” he added, drawing applause from the 225-member legislature.
The US torpedoed one of the Iranian ships, IRIS Dena, just off the island’s southern coast on 4 March, killing at least 84 sailors. Sri Lanka’s navy rescued 32 survivors.
A second Iranian ship, IRIS Bushehr, was allowed to enter Sri Lankan waters the following day amid fears for the safety of its 219 crew, who have since taken shelter in Colombo.
Sri Lanka maintains close ties with both the US, the island’s main export market, and Iran, the main buyer of Sri Lankan tea.
Oil spill
The torpedoing of the IRIS Dena is “highly likely” to have caused an oil spill, a British non-government organization has said.
The Conflict and Environment Observatory, which specializes in monitoring the environmental impact of conflict, identified a 20-kilometer-long oil slick on a satellite image taken by the European Copernicus program the day after the IRIS Dena was sunk.
“We assess it to be highly likely that the spill originated from the vessel, based on the timeline of events and its correlation with reporting from the area,” Leon Moreland, a researcher at CEOBS, told AFP on Wednesday.
The slick appeared to have drifted eastward, reaching protected marine and coastal areas two days after the attack, according to CEOBS and satellite imagery seen by AFP on Thursday.
The Sri Lanka Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) launched cleanup operations on 7 March to remove hydrocarbon residues that had washed up on beaches on the southwest of the island.
Investigations conducted by MEPA found that the source of the oil slick was likely barrels of lubricant dumped at sea.
“This oil type has been identified as a piston-operated loose oil, not classified as a dangerous oil type,” a MEPA spokesperson said at a press conference on 8 March.
The oil slick was cleared by 13 March, MEPA’s chairman Samantha Gunasekara told AFP on Thursday.
MEPA has not reported any damage to marine fauna thus far.