Srilanka, June 5 -- Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles said that Australia is striving to deepen strategic relations with Sri Lanka in many areas including defence while stressing that empowered Sri Lanka is in Australia's national interest, on Tuesday (3).

"We want to work more closely together to deepen our strategic relationship across the bilateral relationship, including in areas like defence, where we can do more in terms of helping to build capacity within the Sri Lankan Armed Forces", he said.

He said that Australia is looking at closer cooperation with the National Defence College in Colombo aiming at expanding defence education avenues for Sri Lankan Armed Forces personnel.

Marles added that...