US Official Calls For End Of Maldives Violence

(Wall Street Journal) - A senior US official Saturday called for both sides involved in a battle for control of the Maldives' government to refrain from violence and work toward forming a unity government as a way out of a political crisis in the Indian Ocean archipelago.

Robert Blake, US assistant secretary of state for South Asia and Central Asia, met separately with President Waheed Hassan Manik and the man who he replaced last week, Mohamed Nasheed.

Nasheed, the country's first-ever democratically elected leader, says he was forced out in an armed coup and has called for Manik, his former vice president, to step down and for immediate presidential elections. Manik denies there was a coup and has rebuffed the call for polls, which are not scheduled until 2013.

Scores of Nasheed's supporters have been injured in clashes with police over the past week in Male, the capital, and outlying islands.

"It's very important for the US that all parties exercise restraint and refrain from violence," Blake said.

The US, which has helped train the country's defense forces, has a strategic interest in a stable Maldives, a country of 400,000 people. Maldives sits on busy shipping lanes and a recent turn among some Maldivians toward a more extreme form of Islam make it a country that cannot be ignored.

A prolonged political crisis also could spell trouble for the country's luxury tourism industry, which caters to almost 900,000 foreign visitors each year.

Blake said there were reports of "quite serious violations of human rights" by police against supporters of Nasheed, including beatings and detention without access to legal representation. The armed forces, Blake said, "need to restore their credibility with the Maldivian people."

He added there also were reports of violence and destruction of property by Nasheed's loyalists, who have taken to the streets in large numbers in Male and elsewhere in the past week to call for his reinstatement.

There were no breakthroughs Saturday. Blake said it was his understanding from talking to "civil society" that immediate elections would not be logistically possible. Instead, he said the US was pushing for the formation of a unity government, with the participation of Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party.

But MDP leaders remained defiant, saying there were no hurdles to elections and the party would continue to protest until polls are held.

Attempts to reach Manik, the new president, or a spokesperson were not successful, but the new government has publicly opposed snap elections.

Nasheed came to power in 2008 in the country's first free polls. His election followed 30 years of rule by an authoritarian president. He said that around 20 armed police and army officers forced him to resign at gunpoint on Tuesday.

Read more: Wall Street Journal