No sign of Iran war or its impact on gas and oil prices easing as 3-week mark nears

Sri Lanka refused the United States permission in early March to park two of its warplanes at a civilian airport in the south of the island, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Friday.

Washington wanted to move two of its missile-armed planes from a base in Djibouti to the civilian international airport in Mattala, Sri Lanka, Dissanayake told parliament.

The request, made on February 26, two days before the start of the US-Israeli assault on Iran, was rejected to maintain Colombo’s neutrality and ensure that its territory was not used for military purposes that could help or hinder either side, he explained.

Sri Lanka was drawn into the aftermath of war when a US submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate, the IRIS Dena, just off its coast in March.

“They wanted to bring two fighter jets armed with eight anti-ship missiles to Mattala International Airport from March 4 to 8, and we said ‘no,'” Dissanayake said.

He did not specify whether the US request was to use Sri Lanka as a base for aircraft to carry out offensive actions against Iran.

Dissanayake said Iran had also requested port calls for three of its warships, returning from India after a naval exercise, on the same day the United States requested permission to station its two planes.

“We are still studying the Iranian request to bring the three ships to Colombo from March 9 to 13. If we had said ‘yes’ to Iran, we should have said ‘yes’ to the United States too,” he said. “But we have not done so. We firmly maintain our position of neutrality.”