Sri Lanka’s Representative-designate to the State of Palestine, M. F. Mohamed Fawzer, formally assumed duties on Tuesday at the Representative Office of Sri Lanka in Ramallah, the Foreign Ministry said.
Addressing staff after taking up his post, Fawzer stressed the importance of strengthening bilateral relations between Sri Lanka and Palestine across the political, economic and cultural spheres. He also pointed to the need to improve consular and welfare services for the Sri Lankan community in the territories, and thanked the office staff for their work during what he described as a recent challenging period.
The assumption of duties comes only days after his appointment as Sri Lanka’s first envoy to Palestine was confirmed by Foreign Affairs Minister Vijitha Herath. Fawzer previously served as Secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Committee of Sri Lanka, a long-running civil-society body advocating Palestinian rights, before being elevated to ambassador-rank representation.
The Ramallah posting reopens an active Sri Lankan diplomatic presence in the Palestinian territories at a time when much of the wider region — including Lebanon, Israel and the Gulf — is still emerging from a sustained military escalation. Sri Lanka’s broader West Asia posture has been notably more activist over recent weeks, including Foreign Minister Herath’s “grave concern” statement on West Asia and the summons of the Iranian Ambassador over the IRIS Dena incident.
Source: Newswire.
