Samantha Power calls Ranil, offers USAID assistance to Sri Lanka
COLOMBO – USAID Administrator Samantha Power spoke with newly appointed Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday (23), and reiterated “her support to the people of Sri Lanka”.
An official US statement. said Power had expressed her sympathy for those Sri Lankans who were killed or injured in the political unrest earlier this month, and “stressed the need to urgently undertake political and economic reforms to gain the trust of the Sri Lankan people”.
It also said that Power had assured the USAID would closely work with other donors such as the IMF, the World Bank, G7, and others to support Sri Lanka during “this extraordinarily difficult period”.
Her call with Wickremesinghe comes as Sri Lanka faces its worst economic crisis in living memory.
Power will be particularly familiar with Sri Lanka, having visited the island on at least three different occasions. Under the Obama administration, she served as a White House national security staffer from 2009 to 2013, before going on to become the US ambassador to the UN until 2017. During her tenure, however, she came under both praise and criticism, particularly for the way in which the administration handled Sri Lanka.
Her return to a senior US government role reportedly left some diplomats in the Sri Lankan regime nervous.
-TG/ENCL