\n Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Sri Lanka on Wednesday to inaugurate a power and irrigation project, unaccompanied by his interior minister who is being sought for arrest over a deadly 1994 bombing.\n<\/p>\n
\n Raisi travelled to the island nation after concluding a state visit to Pakistan alongside Ahmad Vahidi, accused by Argentina of orchestrating the 1994 attack on a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.\n<\/p>\n
\n Interpol issued a red notice requesting police agencies worldwide to take Vahidi into custody, and Argentina had asked both Pakistan and Sri Lanka to arrest him.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the minister was not seen accompanying Raisi, who had arrived in Sri Lanka to inaugurate an Iran-backed power and irrigation project.\n<\/p>\n
\n Iran's official news agency IRNA reported that Vahidi was back in Iran on Tuesday, where he attended a ceremony to induct a new provincial governor.\n<\/p>\n
\n An official from Sri Lanka's foreign ministry told AFP that the interior minister was not listed as part of the Iranian delegation.\n<\/p>\n
\n The 1994 assault has never been claimed or solved, but Argentina and Israel have long suspected the Iran-backed group Hezbollah carried it out at Iran's request.\n<\/p>\n
\n Prosecutors have charged top Iranian officials with ordering the attack, though Tehran has denied any involvement.\n<\/p>\n
\n The court also implicated Hezbollah and called the attack against the AMIA -- the deadliest in Argentina's history -- a \"crime against humanity.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - Dam project -\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe's office said Raisi's visit symbolised \"the cooperation between the two nations in this significant infrastructure endeavour\".\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n Iran is a key buyer of Sri Lanka's tea, the island's main export commodity.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sri Lanka is currently repaying a legacy debt of $215 million for Iranian oil by exporting tea. The country's only oil refinery was built by Iran in 1969.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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' porous border.\n<\/p>\n
\n Tehran carried out the first strikes against an anti-Iran group inside Pakistan, with Islamabad retaliating by hitting \"militant targets\" inside Iran.\n<\/p>\n
\n Both nations have previously accused each other of harbouring militants on their respective sides of the border.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Sri Lanka on Wednesday to inaugurate a power and irrigation project, unaccompanied by his interior minister who is being sought for arrest over a deadly 1994 bombing. Raisi travelled to the island nation after concluding a state visit to Pakistan alongside Ahmad Vahidi, accused by Argentina of orchestrating the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-131232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n