As the deadline for the withdrawal of Indian military personnel from Maldives ends on May 10, the Maldives government led by President Mohamed Muizzu is sending its Foreign minister for the first high-level ministerial visit on May 9.
Moosa Zameer, who is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Maldives, will be in India on an official visit on Thursday, the Ministry of External Affairs announced on Tuesday.
During his visit to New Delhi, Foreign Minister Zameer will meet External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for discussions on bilateral and regional issues of mutual interest, it said.
Soon after coming to power in November 2023, Muizzu, who is seen as pro-China, had asked India to withdraw its military personnel from the island country.
Muizzu had defeated the incumbent, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, in the presidential election on the “India Out” plank.
In February this year, the two countries had agreed that India would pull out all its 80-odd military personnel stationed in the Maldives between March 10 and May 10. Two teams have already withdrawn in the last three months.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs had said that the two helicopters and a Dornier aircraft in the Maldives would be operated by “competent Indian technical personnel” who would replace the “present personnel”.
Zameer, who will have the challenging task of navigating the differences between the two countries, is coming to Delhi in the middle of the election season in India.
The MEA said that “Maldives is India’s key maritime neighbour in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and Foreign Minister Zameer’s visit is expected to lend further momentum to the bilateral cooperation between the two countries”.
India had recently approved highest-ever export quotas for essential commodities — eggs, potatoes, onions, sugar, rice, wheat flour and pulses, river sand and stone aggregates — to Maldives for 2024-25 under a unique bilateral mechanism. The approved quantities are the highest since this arrangement came into effect in 1981.
After the increase, Maldivian Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer had thanked India for its gesture to renew the quota, allowing the export of these increased quantities of essential commodities for the island nation.
Officials said that India remains strongly committed to supporting human-centric development in the Maldives, as part of its ‘neighbourhood first’ policy, and that it will be an important talking point from where to approach the bilateral conversation in an otherwise frosty political relationship.