As Chinese 'Spy' Ship Leaves, Maldives Severs Yet Another Tie With India

MALE, MALDIVES: Maldives will not renew an agreement with India to conduct hydrographic surveys and plans to acquire the facilities and machines required to do the exercise by itself, President Mohamed Muizzu has announced.

Mr Muizzu also announced that his country is working to establish a 24X7 monitoring system for the Maldivian waters this month to ensure control of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) despite its significantly large area.

The development comes days after China signed a defence cooperation agreement with the Maldives to provide free military assistance to foster "stronger" bilateral ties.

India-Maldives ties have suffered a setback ever since Mr Muizzu, who is blindly pro-China, assumed office last year. Hours after he took oath in November 2023, one of the first steps Mr Muizzu took, was to demand India

to withdraw all its troops.

Mr Muizzu's new announcement comes days after a Chinese research and 'spy' vessel spent about a week around Male and more than a month just outside Maldives' EEZ.

Speaking at a ceremony at one of the islands that he was visiting on Monday, Mr Muizzu said, the Maldives Ministry of Defence is making efforts to obtain the facilities required for conducting the hydrographic surveys by the country itself.

"This will allow Maldives to conduct the underwater surveys of the country by ourselves. We will then acquire all insights of our underwater features and prepare charts, they will be drawn by us," the president was quoted as saying by Edition.mv, a news portal on Tuesday.

Maldives' former administration, led by then President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, had signed an agreement with the Indian government to conduct hydrographic surveys of Maldives' underwater features.