Maldives oppn asks India to put pressure on Yameen govt

“The Maldives United Opposition supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Region First’ policy, without reservation. We believe that the Indian Ocean is India’s Ocean, and it should remain that way,” Ahmed Naseem, former Maldivian Foreign Minister and senior leader of Mohamed Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), said here.

“We reject President Yameen’s attempts to balance priorities between our neighbour India on the one hand, and a large country 5,000 km away, on the other. We believe that Yameen’s policy of playing one country off against another is undesirable, untenable and unwarranted,” he said in an apparent reference to China and India during an interaction at the Observer Research Foundation.

Asserting that India can play a much bigger role in the Maldives, Naseem sought more active Indian role in bringing back democracy on track in his country.

“India should not allow fatigue to set in,” he said. Naseem, who is heading a delegation of shadow ministers of the Maldives United Opposition, alleged that there were training camps of ISIS on its soil.