Sri Lanka's president on Friday revealed that his country rejected a request from the US to allow its two fighter jets to land at Mattala International Airport, according to local media.
Speaking at parliament, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said that Colombo had received separate requests on Feb. 26 -- one from Iran seeking permission for three naval vessels to make a goodwill visit, and another from the US requesting landing clearance for two fighter aircraft stationed near Djibouti to land at Mattala International Airport, News 1st reported.
"With two requests before us, the decision was clear," he said, noting that the government denied both in order to avoid taking sides as signs of escalating conflict emerged internationally.
According to the New York Times, the US wanted to land and park the two military aircraft loaded with arms and ammunition in Sri Lanka just two days before its first attack on Iran.
The president stressed that granting access to either party could have compromised Sri Lanka's neutral stance and risked drawing the country into a distant conflict.
To protect Sri Lanka's neutrality, permission was denied to both requests, he said.
He warned that if permission had been granted to any party, that might have exposed key locations, including Mattala International Airport and the Port of Colombo, to geopolitical tensions.
"We will not do that," Dissanayake said, reiterating that Sri Lanka would not come under pressure to abandon its neutrality.
Earlier this month, 104 Iranian sailors were killed in a US strike in international waters off the southern coast of Sri Lanka when a US submarine torpedoed the Iranian warship IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean.
Later, Sri Lankan authorities said they recovered 84 bodies from the water and rescued 32 sailors, while others remain missing.
Days later, Sri Lanka evacuated 208 crew members from a second Iranian vessel, IRIS Bushehr, after the ship requested assistance from Colombo.
Both vessels had been returning from the Milan Peace 2026 naval drills in India.
