At a ceremony held Wednesday evening to mark foreign policy achievements of his two-year-old government and 50 years since the Maldives joined the United Nations, President Yameen said the top priority of his foreign policy was to improve relations with neighbours first. India is and will always remain as the Maldives’ closest ally, he added. The president highlighted India's assistance in thwarting the armed coup in 1988. The 1988 coup d'état was the attempt by a group of Maldivians and assisted by armed mercenaries of a Tamil secessionist organisation from Sri Lanka, the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), to overthrow the government in the island republic. The coup d'état failed due to the intervention of the Indian Army, which dispatched paratroopers and navy frigates to the Maldives. President Yameen also stressed that relations with China are based purely on economic fronts. Maldives needs development, which according to the president can only be achieved through mega projects such as those being carried out with Chinese funding. “Indian Ocean is only a place for the neighbours in the region. This region will remain free from the influence of super powers,” he said, at the ceremony held at the Dharubaaruge convention centre in capital Male. The president’s comments come in light of recent efforts by the Maldives to to bolster its ties, especially in investment and trade, with India as well as rival China. China is funding several infrastructure projects across the Maldives. Delivery of the government’s vital electoral pledges, including the building of a bridge between capital Male and the airport island of Hulhule and the development of the country’s main international airport, also hinges on soft loans being considered by Beijing. Chinese businesses, mostly state owned corporations, have recently forayed into the Maldives with investments in areas such as the Maldives’ upmarket luxury tourism industry. The Maldives also held its second investment forum in the Chinese capital early last month. The close relations between the Maldives and China have come at the expense of its ties with neighbours, especially India, which worries that China was flexing its arms in its traditional clout of control. Despite the recent attempts at improving ties with rival China, the Maldives has embarked on a mission to ramp up its long standing relationship with its closes neighbour, India. The recent thaw saw the visit of India’s top diploma Sushma Swaraj to the Maldives and the restarting of a joint commission after a 15-year hiatus earlier this month. In Male, Swaraj was told by President Yameen that the Maldives has a policy of "India First”. Ties between the Maldives and India are on the mend after reaching its lowest point following the premature termination in 2013 of the agreement with Indian infrastructure giant GMR, which had been managing the country’s main international airport since 2011. In light of the abrupt termination of the GMR agreement, New Delhi took extraordinary measures including the tightening of visa for Maldivian medical tourists and banning the sale of construction aggregate to Maldivian vendors. The Maldives does not give a rosy outlook for Indian companies that have faced several bureaucratic and political hurdles. Most of the Indian companies doing business in the Maldives had been forced out of the country over the past five years. The most high-profile such case relates to the subsequent eviction of GMR, which in 2010 won an international bid to manage the Maldives main international airport, by the Maldives government in 2012. Other Indian companies including Tatva, which had won a contract in 2010 to manage the waste of capital Male, and real estate giant Tata Housing have faced many obstacles, with some leaving the Maldives entirely. However, the Maldives now appears eager to court back Indian investors. At talks held during Swaraj’s recent visit to the Maldives, the Maldivian side reiterated its interest in engaging with private investors in India for iHavan and Hulhulmale Youth City projects. Sectors such as tourism, fisheries, education, IT, infrastructure development, energy cooperation including renewable energy, and traditional medicine were also identified for future cooperation. India, meanwhile, has publicly sided with the Maldives government over the continued imprisonment of the country’s former president Mohamed Nasheed, an issue central to the Maldives’ relationship with its international partners. Nasheed’s lawyers are pushing for targeted sanctions on top Maldivian officials. India, however, opposes such action.