COLOMBO, April 24, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived 
in Sri Lanka on Wednesday to inaugurate a power and irrigation project, 
unaccompanied by his interior minister who is being sought for arrest over a 
deadly 1994 bombing.

Raisi travelled to the island nation after concluding a state visit to 
Pakistan alongside Ahmad Vahidi, accused by Argentina of orchestrating the 
1994 attack on a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 
people.

Interpol issued a red notice requesting police agencies worldwide to take 
Vahidi into custody, and Argentina had asked both Pakistan and Sri Lanka to 
arrest him.

But the minister was not seen accompanying Raisi, who had arrived in Sri 
Lanka to inaugurate an Iran-backed power and irrigation project.

Iran's official news agency IRNA reported that Vahidi was back in Iran on 
Tuesday, where he attended a ceremony to induct a new provincial governor. 

An official from Sri Lanka's foreign ministry told AFP that the interior 
minister was not listed as part of the Iranian delegation.

The 1994 assault has never been claimed or solved, but Argentina and Israel 
have long suspected the Iran-backed group Hezbollah carried it out at Iran's 
request.

Prosecutors have charged top Iranian officials with ordering the attack, 
though Tehran has denied any involvement.

The court also implicated Hezbollah and called the attack against the AMIA -- 
the deadliest in Argentina's history -- a "crime against humanity."

- Dam project -

Raisi arrived at an airport in southern Sri Lanka on Wednesday morning to 
inaugurate the Iran-backed $514 million Uma Oya irrigation and hydro-
electricity project.

It was due to be commissioned in March 2014 but sanctions against the Islamic 
Republic saw the project mired in a decade of delays, Sri Lanka has said. 

Sri Lanka funded most of the $514 million project after an initial investment 
of $50 million from the Export Development Bank of Iran in 2010, while 
construction was carried out by Iranian firm Farab.

Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe's office said Raisi's visit 
symbolised "the cooperation between the two nations in this significant 
infrastructure endeavour".

The two reservoirs are slated to irrigate 4,500 hectares (11,100 acres) of 
new land, while the hydro dam generators have a capacity of 120 megawatts.

Iran is a key buyer of Sri Lanka's tea, the island's main export commodity.

Sri Lanka is currently repaying a legacy debt of $215 million for Iranian oil 
by exporting tea. The country's only oil refinery was built by Iran in 1969.

Raisi arrived in Sri Lanka after a three-day visit to Pakistan that followed 
tit-for-tat missile strikes in January in the region of Balochistan, which 
straddles the two nations' porous border.

Tehran carried out the first strikes against an anti-Iran group inside 
Pakistan, with Islamabad retaliating by hitting "militant targets" inside 
Iran.

Both nations have previously accused each other of harbouring militants on 
their respective sides of the border.