Russia to lend Sri Lanka 300 million US dollars to buy arms

by senthil5000 | February 8, 2010 at 02:31 am

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Though the war in Sri Lanka got over by May 2009, it is still buying arms in large scale. After Mahinda Rajapakse got reelected as president, he visited Russia to sign a loan for 300 million dollars to buy arms.

Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa left on Saturday for Moscow, where he will sign a US$300 million loan to buy military equipment from Russia, despite an end to his country's quarter-century civil war.

Sri Lanka defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May in a final offensive that prompted allegations of human rights abuses from the international community.

Russia, one of the main arms suppliers during the war apart from China and India, backed the Sri Lankan government on several occasions at the Geneva human rights council to head off a debate over the conduct of the war in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka's 2009 defense spending was estimated at up to 200 billion rupees (US$1.74 billion), 17 percent of the country's total estimated expenditure.