Sri Lanka demands recall of Iceland’s diplomat

 
The government of Sri Lanka called for the expulsion of an Icelandic diplomat who made a clandestine visit to the Tamil Tiger-held areas in the north, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday in a statement, IcelandReview reported.
Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said it asked Reykjavik to recall Bjarni Vestmann, a minister-counsellor at Iceland’s foreign ministry, after he entered the country on a tourist visa and went to the north to meet with rebels. Officials of the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry had denied any knowledge of his visit to Sri Lanka and particularly his visit to the rebel-held Wanni district in the north.

“The Sri Lankan foreign minister strongly protested the action of Vestmann and requested his immediate recall,” a ministry statement said. Foreigners and journalists are not allowed to enter territory held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) without government permission. The diplomat had managed to get a ride with Scandinavian truce monitors, the ministry said.

It said it had also lodged a protest with the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) for transporting the diplomat. When Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama took up the matter with his Icelandic counterpart, Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir, the latter “tendered an unqualified written apology” to the government of Sri Lanka, a press release from the Sri Lankan foreign office said.