Lanka rejects reports on President Sirisena's assassination plot

Sri Lankan government on Wednesday rejected as "baseless and false" the media reports that President Maithripala Sirisena accused India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of plotting his assassination and he opposed awarding a key port project to India.

The media reports came ahead of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's visit to New Delhi for talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speed up India-backed projects, including the East Terminal project, in the island nation.

Sirisena accused his senior coalition partner, the United National Party (UNP), of not taking seriously an alleged conspiracy to kill him and former secretary to the ministry of defence, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the economynext.com reported quoting a ministerial source after a heated Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

The minister, who declined to be named, claimed that the president said that India's external intelligence agency RAW was behind the plot.

The Lankan Foreign Ministry termed the report as "baseless and false."
"So far, what we have is the figment of someone's imagination of an assassination plot," the source said. "What can now be done is to look at the genesis of this story and how it came about."