Indian Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane will visit Sri Lanka on a five-day tour. General Naravane is anticipated to meet with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Commander-in-Chief of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa during his visit. On Wednesday, he will be honoured at Army Headquarters with a “vibrantly colored Guard March with an elegantly-dressed special Victory parade salute,” according to the Sri Lankan Army.
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The concluding display of the current bilateral Exercise ‘Mitra Shakti’ will be witnessed by the Indian Army Chief General on Thursday at Maduru Oya Special Forces Training School in the east. At the Combat Training School in the island nation’s eastern region of Ampara, India and Sri Lanka launched a 12-day major military exercise last week, emphasising counter-terror cooperation. From October 4 to 15, an all-arms group of 120 Indian Army troops led by Colonel Prakash Kumar took part in the eighth iteration of the ‘Mitra Shakti’ exercise.
According to the Sri Lanka Army, the combined military exercise aims to improve knowledge of transnational terrorism, interoperability abilities, joint tactical operations, and exchange of best practices and experiences. Every year, the yearly training programme alternates between India and Sri Lanka and has substantially helped strengthen bilateral military collaboration, understanding, and ties of neighbourly relations between the two services, according to the statement.
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General Naravane is due to pay floral tributes to the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) War Heroes at the memorial here, where he will be heading a five-member team. From 1987 until 1990, he was a member of the IPKP in Sri Lanka’s north and east. General Naravane’s visit comes a week after Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla visited Sri Lanka and spoke with the country’s senior authorities, emphasising India’s commitment to moving forward on mutually beneficial projects as quickly as possible.
