Maldives Asks India To Withdraw Its Troops Before March 15 Amid Row
Mumbai: Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu has asked the Indian government to withdraw its troops before March 15, a SunOnline report said while quoting an official of the President’s Office. This came amid a diplomatic row over alleged racist remarks by Maldivian leaders against India and PM Narendra Modi.
The latest government statistics indicate that there are eighty-eight Indian military soldiers in the Maldives.
President Muizzu has formally ordered India to remove its military forces by March 15th, according to a press briefing given by Abdulla Nazim Ibrahim, the President’s Office’s public policy secretary, the SunOnline daily said.
“Indian military personnel cannot stay in the Maldives. This is the policy of President Dr Mohamed Muizzu and that of this administration,” he said.
A high-level core group has been established by India and the Maldives to negotiate the troop withdrawal. The group held its first meeting at the Foreign Ministry Headquarters in Male’ on Sunday morning.
According to the report, Indian High Commissioner Munu Mahawar was also present at the meeting.
Nazim verified the meeting and stated that the request to remove troops by March 15 was on the agenda.
The Indian government rejected and did not immediately comment on the media allegation.
Muizzu, who is seen as a pro-China politician, asked India to remove its military personnel from the Maldives shortly after he took office on November 17, 2018, claiming the Maldivians had given him a “strong mandate” to make this request to New Delhi.
The request for the removal of Indian military personnel coincides with a spat between the two countries over disparaging remarks made about Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media by three deputy ministers of the Muizzu cabinet.
The three ministers were suspended by Muizzu following their social media posts that caused alarm in India and prompted calls for a boycott by the country’s tourists, who were second only to Russians in terms of quantity. Chinese visitors came in third.
Muizzu tried to bring the Maldives closer to Beijing during his just finished state visit to China.
After arriving back from China on Saturday, President Muizzu made an insinuating jab at India in a news conference.
Without naming any country, he said, “We may be small, but that doesn’t give you the license to bully us.” He also announced plans to reduce the country’s dependency on India, including securing imports of essential food commodities and medicine and consumables from other countries.
“We aren’t in anyone’s backyard. We are an independent and sovereign state,” he said, addressing the reporters gathered at the Velana International Airport.
He asserted that regardless of a nation’s size, no nation has the right to meddle in its internal affairs.
He promised that he would not permit outside interference in the Maldives’ internal affairs.
Male is also going over more than a hundred bilateral agreements that the former government signed here with New Delhi.
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