The United States Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, S. Paul Kapur, met the Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the Presidential Secretariat during a three-day visit to the island, in talks centred on trade, investment and security cooperation.
Kapur's visit, from 21 to 24 June, was billed by the United States as a mission to "advance trade, investment, and security cooperation", and was framed by the Trump administration as a reflection of its drive to deepen ties with Sri Lanka as "a key Indian Ocean partner".
The meeting itself, according to the Sri Lankan readout, saw both sides reflect on the 77-year diplomatic relationship and describe cooperation as having grown into a partnership spanning trade, defence, investment and tourism, with Kapur reaffirming Washington's commitment to deepening relations.
Trade dominated the discussion. With the United States Sri Lanka's largest export market, the two sides explored expanding economic engagement and addressing tariff concerns affecting Sri Lankan exports, an issue sharpened by the Trump administration's tariff regime. Dissanayake noted the difficulty Sri Lanka faced as a smaller economy in narrowing its trade imbalance with the United States, and both agreed on the importance of concluding bilateral trade talks as early as possible.
The two also exchanged views on the Middle East, expressing hope that recent developments would support regional stability, and the United States delegation commended Sri Lanka's assistance, said to have been provided in line with international law, to two vessels that ran into difficulty near its waters earlier in the year. The meeting was attended on the Sri Lankan side by the labour minister and deputy finance minister Anil Jayantha Fernando and the secretary to the president, Nandika Sanath Kumanayake, and on the American side by the Chargé d'Affaires Jayne Howell and other embassy and State Department officials.
Sworn in last October, Kapur is on leave from the United States Naval Postgraduate School, where he taught national security affairs, and is a scholar of South Asian security and nuclear strategy who has directed United States-India strategic dialogues for the Pentagon.
