New Delhi: Amidst criticism that Sri Lanka’s delay in letting Iranian ships dock at its ports left the IRIS Dena vulnerable to the eventual US attack that sunk it, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake revealed in parliament today, March 20, that the country had denied a request from the United States to land two of its fighter jets as well.Colombo denied a request by the United States to land two fighter jets in Mattala, just as it also refused a request from Iran to allow three of its ships to come to Sri Lanka on a goodwill visit, Dissanayake said.“Sri Lanka maintained neutrality by refusing the two requests by both the US and Iran,” he said, according to the Daily Mirror Online. The announcement comes a day after US Special Envoy Sergio Gor met with Dissanayake.In parliament, according to reports, Dissanayake sought to claim that Sri Lanka had taken an impartial stance. The Sri Lankan portal Economy Next quoted him as having said: “Certain parties are saying that we have signed agreements with the US, and that’s why we delayed to entertain the Iranian vessel. It was said in parliament that a delay of 11 hours on our part is what sacrificed the Iranian vessel; That’s outrageous, inhumane.”Earlier this month, after a United States submarine torpedoed and sunk an Iranian warship, IRIS Dena, off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, killing at least 87, Sri Lankan opposition MP Mujibur Rahman had asked in parliament why the government took 11 hours to respond to a request from the IRIS Dena to dock at Galle Port.“Why’d we allow… ship to wait for 11 hours?… Why didn’t we allow… [it] to berth at Galle port?” Rahman said.R Adm Sarath Weerasekara, the former chief of staff of the Sri Lankan navy, told The Guardian something similar. “We did not take any prompt action,” said Weerasekara. “We could have saved those lives also. This has been discussed in the security council and yet no action has been taken.”In the aftermath of the attack, Sri Lanka agreed to allow one of the other Iran ships, Bushehr, to dock late on March 4, amid fears it too would be hit.In parliament, Dissanayake said, “We received the request on February 26 for the 3 Iranian vessels to call at port on a goodwill visit between March 9-13. On the same day evening, the US requested permission for two of its warplanes near Djibouti to land at Mattala airport.”“So there were two pieces of paper on our desk; one asked for permission for the Iranian vessels to call at port between March 9-13, the other from the US asking to allow 2 naval warplanes to land at Mattala. What should we have done? As a neutral nation we said no to both. That’s impartiality,” the president said.“If we said yes to one party, we would have had to say yes to the other too,” he said.Days prior to being sunk, the Iranian frigate had on February 17 docked in Visakhapatnam for the Indian Eastern Naval Command’s flagship maritime exercise ‘MILAN’. The move by the US, though on international waters, is largely seen as an insult to India, whose guest the Iranian ships were.