Word: maldivian
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...overhead; although it is a U.N. member, Gambia has no U.N. mission, told the Assembly it might not be able to afford the minimum annual U.N. club fee of $40,000. The Maldive Islands near Ceylon are so poor that the U.N. must forward their mail through the Maldivian Philatelic Agency, located in Manhattan down the street from Macy's. Rwanda President Gregoire Kayibanda's chief government handicap is even more serious: he has no telephone in his palace in Kigali. Periodically he sends a minister driving off to neighboring Uganda to find out what is happening...
...Maldives, whose 95,000 Moslems mostly fish. Although the British had held them as a protectorate since 1887, the islands had always governed themselves, and the British had never even sent an administrator to their capital at Male. Britain's only responsibilities, in fact, were the conduct of Maldivian foreign affairs (nonexistent) and defense (unnecessary). Its only interest was the R.A.F. runway on the island of Gan, which it will retain as a steppingstone to Southeast Asia...
...confident," Commonwealth Relations Secretary Arthur Bottomley told Parliament in London last week, "that this will mark the beginning of a new and happy era in Anglo-Maldivian relations." But even that did not seem very likely. Rather than join the worldwide stampede of newly emerging nations, the Maldives seem intent on submerging. They are not going to join the Commonwealth. They have not applied for membership in the United Nations. Nor, apparently, will they seek diplomatic relations with any nation anywhere. The closest thing the Maldivians have to a foreign service, in fact, is a Male fish trader...
Last fall the British finally agreed to help the central government put down the rebellion-but they also helped the rebel leader, one Abdullah Afif, get away to safety in the Seychelle Islands, 1,200 miles to the southwest. That infuriated Maldivian Prime Minister Ibrahim Nasir, who simultaneously functions as Foreign, Finance, Education and Public Safety Minister. In revenge, Maldivian saboteurs began to tear up a British mail and supply airstrip near Male. When the British (who hand out $50,000 a year to the Maldives) protested, Nasir decided he would act just like a great big emerging nation, demanded...
...song was equipped with Maldivian lyrics by the Maldives' late President, Amin Didi, who evidently took a fancy to the tune during his travels through the British Empire...