Colombo, 30 June, (Asiantribune.com): Sri Lanka denied yesterday the news reports about the arrival of the elite Indian and Afghanistan troops for the special security of Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, Indian delegation and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

A highly placed Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry official flatly denied those reports appearing in a section of the Sri Lankan newspapers that 3000 elite Indian troops are coming from India to give security to Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and the Indian delegation coming to participate in the 15th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) scheduled to take place from July 27 to August 3, in Sri Lanka`s capital Colombo.

Furthermore, news paper reports revealed that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is also arriving with a pose of his elite commandos for his personal security in Colombo.

A section of the Sri Lankan press at the height of their imagination came up with reports that 1500 India`s elite forces have already arrived in Colombo and balances are expected shortly.

Sri Lanka foreign ministry official speaking to Asian Tribune said these are fabrication and there is no truth behind these reports.

He added that it must be pointed out that even our President Mahinda Rajapakse when he visits to Rome or London or any other countries, he too use to take his own personal security officers for his own security arrangements. He added that Head of states use to take their own security staffs whenever they visit foreign countries and this practice has already become a mandatory security requirement after the 9/11 incident.

In an interview with a news agency, Sri Lanka`s military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara has also concurred that `Not only India, all the other leaders will also bring their own security personnel for their own security. This is a common practice everywhere. But we have our own special security arrangements for the SAARC summit as a whole.`

The highly placed foreign ministry official who wishes to remain anonymous told that 15th SAARC summit will be held at the Bandaranaike International Memorial Conference Hall (BMICH) in Colombo and not in Kandy as earlier reported.

When asked of the criticism levelled by some newspapers about the exorbitant budget of SLR 2.8 billion allocated for the summit, he said that SAARC is an expensive one and not that cheap. He added that for the summit, streets in Colombo have to be renovated, streets lights taken care of, trees planted all along the main thoroughfares of the capital city and security arrangements have to be made. All these expenses are built-in in the summit budget. These expenses will take a great deal of the money allocated for the conference, he clarified.

As the summit is scheduled to be held against the backdrop of soaring prices and crisis of food grains and oil across the globe that is hitting South Asian countries hard, it is expected Sri Lanka to come up with a proposal for the setting up a SAARC Food Bank aimed at meeting the requirements of member-countries at times of need.

Food as well as fuel security issue would be high on the agenda of the summit, that will have a structured discussion on the subjects to see how the two issues can be addressed and the burden reduced.

Around 1,000 delegates and hundreds of media personnel from SAARC and other countries are expected to pour into Colombo for the summit.