Sri Lanka's principal opposition party United National Party (UNP) is urging countrymen to see their giant neighbour India as a provider of opportunities for economic development, and not as a threat to their existence.

"Sri Lankans should stop thinking small and begin thinking big. India's size and the direction of its economic development provide Sri Lanka immense opportunities for partnership and growth," said Milinda Moragoda, a close confidante of the UNP chief, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

"Sri Lankans should begin looking at India as an opportunity and not as a threat," Moragoda told Hindustan Times , ahead of Wickremesinghe's official visit to India, beginning on Monday.

Presently leader of the opposition in the Sri Lankan parliament, Wickremesinghe, accompanied by Moragoda, would be meeting President APJ Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, and National Security Advisor, JN Dixit, among others, during his sojourn in New Delhi.

Moragoda said that there was a tendency in Sri Lanka to view the relationship with India primarily and very narrowly, through the prism of military security, a concern arising from the two decade long, armed Tamil separatist movement in the island.

He regretted that there was very little appreciation of the importance of the economic dimension for the resolution of the ethnic conflict.