Maldives saved Sri Lanka from being placed on CMAG's agenda: Foreign Minister Samad

Maldives Foreign Minister Dr. Abdul Samad Abdulla has said that Sri Lanka was kept from being put on the agenda of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) by the efforts put against the move by the Maldives.

Speaking to a Sri Lankan newspaper “The Sunday Times” during a recent visit to the country, Dr. Samad said that he attended last month’s CMAG meeting in London and that Maldives at this meeting, strongly resisted the move by some Commonwealth nations to put Sri Lankan on the formal CMAG agenda.

“I have seen and experienced what Sri Lankans went through for so many years due to the scourge of terrorism. So it is unfair to bring punitive action of any sort against a country that has been through such a traumatic experience,” the Sri Lankan newspaper reports Dr. Samad to have stated.

The Foreign Minister was also reported to have said that there might have been excesses during the war but the internal mechanism put in place by the Sri Lanka government could address those concerns.

Dr. Samad had said that he could not say for certain if there would be no further attempts to act against Sri Lanka prior to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka in November but said these moves were unlikely to succeed.

The Maldives Foreign Minister had reiterated his stand to the Sri Lankan media that Maldivian government never accepted that it qualified to be placed on the formal agenda of the CMAG last year, due to questions about the circumstances that led to the transfer of power in February.

The CMAG comprises of Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Jamaica, the Maldives, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu.