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India and the United Arab Emirates will look to further their already-strong strategic partnership to an all-time high when External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his counterpart Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan will meet in Delhi today for a comprehensive strategic dialogue.
Mr Jaishankar and Sheikh Al Nahyan will review the entire gamut of ties between India and UAE and focus on enhancing the strategic partnership. The meeting also assumes significance as it comes close on the heels of the regime change in Syria.
West Asia, popularly called the Middle-East by Western nations, is at a critical juncture, with tensions between Israel and Iran simmering, the situation in Syria being extremely volatile, and Turkey launching strikes on Syria too. Bashar Al-Assad has been granted asylum in Moscow and Russia has lost its access to the Mediterranean Sea with the Tartus naval base in Syria now no longer in its control.
The two leaders will discuss the crises in the middle-east in great detail. Besides geopolitics, and strategic ties, Mr Jaishankar and Sheikh Al Nahyan will have a comprehensive dialogue on other aspects of the bilateral relationship between India and UAE, including trade and commerce, investment, cultural and scientific ties, among others.
Sheikh Al Nahyan, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister of UAE, will then call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It was Prime Minister Modi's historic visit to the UAE in August 2015 that elevated the bilateral relationship between the two countries to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
The two nations also signed the landmark Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement or CEPA in 2022 which resulted in a massive upswing in trade and investment between the two sides. The trade deal led to the elimination of several tariffs and significantly lowered other levies. This further led to enhanced market access across various sectors.
Today, India and the UAE are among each others top trading partners, and the bilateral trade between the two countries stood at around USD 85 billion in 2022-23. UAE was also among the top four investors in India in terms of Foreign Direct Investments or FDI in 2022-23.
The two leaders will aim to build on these and scale up economic ties when they meet in New Delhi tomorrow. Mr Jaishankar might also raise the issue of visa applications reportedly being denied to Indians after new rules have been set in the UAE.
Dubai's emigration department recently introduced stricter requirements for tourist visas, mandating travelers to provide hotel booking documents with QR codes and a copy of their return tickets. For travelers staying with relatives, additional proof of accommodation is needed by the latter. This has reportedly led to a significant rise in visa applications being rejected.
(Inputs from PTI)