Muizzu Asks India to Clear Maldives of its Soldiers
NEW DELHI, Nov 18: Among his first acts after he was sworn-in the president of Maldives was to implement the election promise of getting rid of presence of foreign army on the lands of the island nation.
Within a day after he was sworn in, the office of Maldives president Mohamed Muizzu on Saturday announced that the government has officially asked India to withdraw its military presence from the country.
The announcement said Mr Muizzu formally made the request when he met Union Minister Kiren Rijiju at the President’s Office earlier in the day. Mr Rijiju, who is the minister of earth sciences, was in the country to attend the swearing-in ceremony.
India has around 70 soldiers in the Maldives, manning radars and surveillance aircraft. Indian warships also help patrol the country’s exclusive economic zone.
The withdrawal of foreign troops from the archipelago has been one of the key promises of the new president and he had reiterated his resolve to do so in his first speech to the nation after being sworn in on Friday. Without naming India, Mr Muizzu said, “The country will not have any foreign military personnel in the Maldives.”
When it comes to our security, I will draw a red line. The Maldives will respect the red lines of other countries too,” he said. Earlier in the week, Mr Muizzu, who is widely seen as pro-China, had said his intention was not to upend the regional balance by replacing the Indian military with Chinese troops. “Maldives is too small to be entangled in geopolitical rivalry. I am not very much interested to engage the Maldivian foreign policy in this,” he had said.
(Manas Dasgupta)
