Maldives’ Abdulla Shahid ‘best equipped’ to be UNGA President: Jaishankar

He offered a $40 million Line of Credit to the Maldives in a bid to boost the sports infrastructure of the country.

Union External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.

India on Saturday reiterated its support for a greater role for the Maldives in multilateral affairs. Speaking at a joint media event in the Maldives’ capital Male, External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar said Maldives’ Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid is “best equipped” to be the President of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly. 

“I reiterate today India’s strong support to the candidature of Foreign Minister Abdullah Shahid for the President of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly next year. Foreign Minister Shahid with his vast diplomatic experience and his leadership qualities is in our view the best equipped to preside over the General Assembly of 193 nations of the world. We will work together to make this a reality. We would really like to work with you during our membership of the UN Security Council for 2021-22,” said Dr. Jaishankar in his remarks. 

The senior Indian Minister said multilateral engagement was “very important” in the contemporary globalised system and maintained that India had always been “supportive” of the “larger participation of the Maldives”, and added, “By joining the Indian Ocean Regional Association, rejoining the Commonwealth and by playing a greater role in the United Nations, Maldives has demonstrated its value in the comity of nations.”

Maldives rejoined the Commonwealth in February 2020, three years after it had quit the organisation over criticism of its human rights records.

Mr. Jaishankar reviewed the ongoing India-supported infrastructure projects in the country and handed over 100,000 additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines to his counterpart Mr. Shahid and Health Minister Ahmed Naseem. Both sides also sealed agreements on a number of areas, including fish processing, public broadcasting, sustainable urban development, road infrastructure and housing. He also announced a standalone line of credit of $40 million for the building of sports infrastructure that will cater to the fast-emerging Maldivian sporting talents.

In his remarks, Mr. Shahid compared India-Maldives relations to the “synchronised motion” of two wings of a bird and said, “Our two countries are just like those wings. We work in harmony, we work together, with the same interests, aiming to reach the same destination.”