The senior United States diplomat in Colombo has met Sri Lanka’s Deputy Speaker to discuss maritime security and efforts against the drug trade, Parliament’s communications office said.
Davis Myers, Chargé d’Affaires and Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Sri Lanka, called on Deputy Speaker Rizvie Salih, EconomyNext reported, citing the parliamentary communications office.
“Both parties engaged in cordial discussions on matters of mutual interest, including maritime security and measures to combat the drug menace,” the office said in the statement quoted by EconomyNext.
Who was present
Parliament’s Secretary General Kushani Rohanadeera attended, along with two US Embassy officials — Political Officer Rachel Huggins and Political Specialist Nazreen Marikkar.
The two agenda items
Both subjects raised are established channels of US–Sri Lanka engagement rather than new initiatives.
Maritime security covers the Indian Ocean sea lanes that carry a large share of global container traffic past Sri Lanka’s southern coast, and has been a recurring theme in US engagement with Colombo.
The reference to narcotics follows sustained Sri Lanka Navy interdiction activity in the seas around the island. This desk has reported repeatedly on vessels stopped with suspected drug consignments and on the arrest of crews in those operations.
What the statement does not say
The account is brief and leaves the substance open. It gives no date for the meeting — the original statement says only that the call was made “recently” — and does not say whether any specific cooperation, funding or joint operation was agreed. It records no commitment by either side beyond the discussion itself.
It also does not indicate whether the meeting formed part of a wider round of calls on parliamentary office-holders, which is the usual pattern for a courtesy call by a head of mission.
Sourcing note
This report rests on a single verified outlet’s account of a statement issued by Parliament’s own communications office, not on independent reporting. Searches across the Daily Mirror and Hiru News rails, and across other verified newsrooms, found no separate filing on the meeting. No US Embassy readout was located.
The photograph above is the official image distributed with the statement; it carries the credit line “Department of Communication, Parliament of Sri Lanka”.
Readers should note that search results on this subject also surface a separate, earlier meeting between the same Deputy Speaker and US Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan, which this desk covered in July. The two are different events. Material describing a guided tour of the Parliament building appears in search summaries but could not be confirmed against a fetched source, and is therefore not reported here as fact.
