Colombo: Sri Lanka has hailed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit on Monday as an important step in cementing closer ties between the two nations.

But the trip also highlights Sri Lanka's slow turn away from the West, which has expressed increasing concerns about Colombo's human rights record, and its embrace of donors less critical of its escalating war against ethnic Tamil rebels.

"In Asia, we don't go around preaching to our neighbours and our friends," said Sri Lanka's foreign secretary, Palitha Kohona. "This public naming and shaming process
that seems to have become so popular in the West is really not so accepted here."

In a sign of Sri Lanka's growing focus, President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited China twice in the past 18 months, dropped in on neighbours India and Pakistan and traveled to Iran in November.

During that trip, Iran pledged $1.9 billion in soft loans and grants to Sri Lanka to help it expand its only oil refinery, develop an irrigation and hydropower project and buy Iranian oil.

Kohona said, "It is the biggest development assistance package for Sri Lanka at the moment."

Ahmadinejad is expected to meet top officials and to tour several development projects during his two-day trip. It has not been announced whether he will come bearing further aid for this South Asian nation.

China is also giving about $1 billion in aid for a massive new port, an arts centre, a power plant and other development projects, Kohona said.

Meanwhile, Western nations are giving far less money and much heavier criticism of Sri Lanka's conduct of the war.