PM Modi to leave on 3-nation tour tomorrow, to ‘strongly’ take up fishermen issue with Sri Lanka

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets off on Tuesday on a five-day tour of Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka that is expected to give traction to the country's Indian Ocean outreach during which he also visit a former war zone and Tamil heartland of Jaffna. As Modi visits Sri Lanka on March 13-14 on the third and final leg of his tour, Indian officials said on Monday that New Delhi is looking forward to a solution to the "humanitarian" issue of its fishermen's rights amid controversial remarks by Lankan Premier Ranil Wickramasinghe.

Modi will be the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Jaffna where he will hand over homes built with the help of Indian assistance. An Indian Prime Minister is also visiting the island nation after a gap of 28 years since late Rajiv Gandhi last visited the country in 1987. Some 20,000 such homes were built in Jaffna described by India as "a flagship cooperation project currently in Sri Lanka".

Asked at a news conference about the controversy over Wickramasinghe's remarks that Indian fishermen may be shot if they intruded into his country's waters, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had taken up the matter with the premier during her meeting with him in Colombo last Saturday. "It is recognised today that there is a livelihood issue (of fishermen). There is a humanitarian aspect. We expect to sit with Lanka in finding a solution," Jaishankar said.

The current thinking is that the fishermen bodies on both sides could meet just after Modi's visit to Lanka. Jaishankar also said that India is working with Sri Lanka's new government to repatriate nearly one lakh Tamil refugees who fled to Tamil Nadu during the civil war. "We had agreed when Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister was here (in New Delhi) in January to find ways by which these refugees could go back with honour, dignity, safety," he said. He said one meeting already had taken place on the bilateral side on January 30 to discuss the issue.

According to Jaishankar, there are 65,000 refugees living in 109 government-run camps in Tamil Nadu and another 37,000 are staying elsewhere in the state. Modi, who will also address Sri Lankan Parliament during his visit, will be only the second foreign leader after British Premier David Cameron to visit Jaffna in the Northern province. Cameron went to Jaffna in November 2013 on the sidelines of the Commonwealth summit hosted by former president Mahinda Rajapakse in November 2013.

On the first day of his visit to Lanka on Friday, Modi will hold summit talks with Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena who was in India last month on his first foreign trip after assuming office. "I embark on my visit to Sri Lanka with joy & the confidence that the visit will make India-SL relations even stronger in the years to come," Modi tweeted yesterday about his three-nation visit.

Jaishankar said India is discussing a lot of issues with Sri Lanka and that the issue of reconciliation in that country features significantly. "We want to promote and encourage the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka," he said. "We have been a fairly significant contributor to rebuilding of Sri Lanka," he added.

Modi's visit to Lanka comes a month after the new President's first foreign trip that brought him to India in a bid to rebuild ties hit by tensions over growing Chinese influence on the strategically located island. He will also lay a wreath at the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) Memorial and the Mahabodhi society and address Sri Lankan business leaders. Modi will be travelling to Jaffna on March 14 after a trip to Anuradhapura, a sacred Buddhist city steeped in the richness of the Sinhalese civilisation and Talaimannar where he will flag a train.

In Seychelles, Modi will hold bilateral talks with President James Alexis Michel on Wednesday in a bid to strengthen maritime security and bilateral development cooperation. He is due to reach Seychelles tomorrow night. He will be the second Indian prime minister to visit the strategic island nation, which has a population of 92,000 after Indira Gandhi had travelled there in 1981. The Prime Minister will also operationalise a coastal surveillance radar. Modi heads to Mauritius on the second leg of his trip on Wednesday afternoon. He will hold talks with Prime Minister Sir Anerood Jugnauth and address Mauritian parliament. The Prime Minister will also be the Chief Guest at Mauritius's 42nd National Day celebrations.

The Prime Minister will also attend a programme to mark the commissioning of MCGS Barracuda, an offshore patrol vessel which India exported to Mauritius for use of that country’s National Coast Guard. Jaishanker said India's commercial ties has grown significantly with the three ocean economies and that they offered new possibilities of cooperation. "We are very bullish about the relationships," he added.