The Maldives has signed a military assistance pact with China as President Mohamed Muizzu reiterated his position that there will be no Indian military presence in his country not “even in civilian attire.” According to the Defense Ministry of the island nation, Defense Chief Mohamed Ghassan Maumoon and Chinese official for Military Cooperation Maj. Gen. Zhang Baoqun signed an \u201cagreement on China’s provision of military assistance gratis\u201d to the Maldives, \u201cfostering stronger bilateral ties.\u201d The agreement appears to have been signed in the capital Male on Monday, according to the ministry\u2019s social media handle X. China\u2019s top diplomat in Male Ambassador Wang Lixin is also seen in the pictures shared by the ministry. Ahead of the signing ceremony, Maumoon and Zhang discussed \u201cenhancing defense cooperation\u201d between the Maldives and China, the ministry said. Meanwhile, Muizzu has affirmed that \u201cno Indian military personnel, not even those in civilian clothing, would be present inside his country after May 10.\u201d His statement comes after the Indian civilian team’s arrival ahead of the agreed military withdrawal deadline which was earlier set as March 15. The Maldives asked India in January to withdraw its 88 troops from the island nation. Meanwhile, China\u2019s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Beijing was \u201ccommitted to building a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with the Maldives,\u201d Chinese media reported. \u201cNormal cooperation between China and Maldives does not target\u2026, nor is it influenced by any third party,\u201d Mao said about the Chinese military aid to Maldives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Maldives has signed a military assistance pact with China as President Mohamed Muizzu reiterated his position that there will be no Indian military presence…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14997,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}