Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Sri Lanka on Wednesday and inaugurated a power and irrigation project, unaccompanied by his interior minister who is being sought for arrest over a deadly 1994 bombing.
Raisi arrived at an airport in southern Sri Lanka on Wednesday morning to inaugurate the Iran-backed $514 million Uma Oya irrigation and hydro-electricity project.
It was due to be commissioned in March 2014 but sanctions against the Islamic Republic saw the project mired in a decade of delays, Sri Lanka has said.聽
Sri Lanka funded most of the $514 million 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.
Sri Lanka president Ranil Wickremesinghe鈥檚 office said Raisi鈥檚 visit symbolised 鈥榯he cooperation between the two nations in this significant infrastructure endeavour鈥�.
The two reservoirs are slated to irrigate 4,500 hectares (11,100 acres) of new land, while the hydro dam generators have a capacity of 120 megawatts.
Iran is a key buyer of Sri Lanka鈥檚 tea, the island鈥檚 main export commodity.
Sri Lanka is currently repaying a legacy debt of $215 million for Iranian oil by exporting tea. The country鈥檚 only oil refinery was built by Iran in 1969.
Raisi arrived in Sri Lanka after a three-day visit to Pakistan that followed tit-for-tat missile strikes in January in the region of Balochistan, which straddles the two nations鈥� porous border.
Tehran carried out the first strikes against an anti-Iran group inside Pakistan, with Islamabad retaliating by hitting 鈥榤ilitant targets鈥� inside Iran.
Both nations have previously accused each other of harbouring militants on their respective sides of the border.
