Sri Lanka’s government, under pressure over human rights violations, is abandoning support from traditional but rights-sensitive partners like the US and Europe and turning to countries like China and Iran to finance its infrastructure projects. Relations between the country’s traditional partners and the government turned frosty in recent months as the US, the EU and international human rights groups raise concern over growing rights violations, including the harassment of journalists.

Recently World Bank officials were told by a senior functionary of the treasury: “We don’t need your money (with all those strings).” Foreign affairs analysts and economists say President Mahinda Rajapakse’s nationalist government is relying on ‘outside’ support because foreign aid in the form of grants and concessional loans comes with strings attached — which the government does not want to accept.

Last year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pulled out of Sri Lanka and has no programmes in this country while the Bank recently completed a series of consultations with civil society groups, including farmers and journalists, seeking input for a new three-year country strategy. The real reason however, according to a civil society activist, was to “use us to put pressure on the government because the authorities don’t listen to the World Bank any more”.Analysts like Nanda Godage, a retired diplomat and commentator, says there appears to be a ‘clumsy’ policy in relation to foreign affairs. “Normally the foreign ministry should have a (well researched) paper assessing relationships and the economic and political fallout (of sidelining countries like the US, the EU). This is missing - we need to diplomatically tackle institutions like the Bank and the IMF instead of being blunt with them.”

Godage said Sri Lanka is better off not antagonising the Bank and the IMF which are controlled by them (the US and the EU),” he said. “We are making enemies out of friends.” Sri Lanka’s foreign minister Rohitha Bogollagama and his foreign secretary Palitha Kohona are known to be at loggerheads over various issues, while Rajapakse has also independently taken decisions on foreign policy. Another sore point in foreign policy will come to the fore when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits Sri Lanka on April 28 on the first stop of his first ever Asia tour. Most analysts agree that the current government’s foreign policy may, in the short term, find solutions to immediate needs but is disastrous in the long term. Sirimal Abeyeratne, an economist at the University of Colombo, says spending discipline is necessary for countries like Sri Lanka where spending is wayward and used for projects other than the intended purpose.

Ravi Karunanayake, a former trade minister and now frontline opposition politician, believes

the country is falling ever deeper into debt as the government resorts to costly commercial borrowings as against soft loans and grant aid. “We’ll be paying through our noses for generations to settle this debt,” he said. — IPS