Raisi Visits Sri Lanka, Inaugurates Key Project

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Sri Lanka after a three-day visit to Pakistan.

Raisi's Airbus A340 aircraft first landed at an airport in southern Sri Lanka near the $514 million Uma Oya irrigation and hydro-electricity project.

It was due to be commissioned in March 2014 but international sanctions against Iran saw the project mired in a decade of delays, Sri Lanka has said.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi inaugurated a power and irrigation project in Sri Lanka, but arrived in the country without his interior minister, who is wanted over a deadly 1994 bombing.

Raisi flew in after a state visit to Pakistan he made alongside Ahmad Vahidi, accused by Argentina of orchestrating the 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

Interpol issued a red notice requesting police agencies worldwide to take Vahidi into custody, and Argentina had asked both Pakistan and Sri Lanka to arrest him.

Prosecutors have charged top Iranian officials with ordering the attack, though Tehran has denied any involvement.

Raisi told a public rally at the Uma Oya site that Western countries tried to convince others that they were the sole source of knowledge and technology, but "skilful Iranian experts" had developed their own capacities.

"Our enemies did not favor development and progress for Iran, but the Iranian people were determined in order to realize it," he said.

Sri Lanka funded most of the dam project after an initial investment of $50 million from the Export Development Bank of Iran in 2010, while construction was carried out by Iranian firm Farab.

Raisi then flew to the capital Colombo and was accorded a 21-gun salute before talks with Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose office said the visit symbolized "the cooperation between the two nations in this significant infrastructure endeavor".