Sheikh Abdullah interacts with Indian counterpart Jaishankar at South Africa meet

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs, met Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Indian Minister of External Affairs, on the sidelines of the ‘Friends of BRICS’ meeting in Cape Town, South Africa.

During the meeting, the two top diplomats discussed the strategic relations, cooperation and Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between the UAE and the Republic of India, its output after one year of its launch, and its important role in achieving sustainable economic prosperity for the two countries. The ministers also touched on items of common interest on the agenda of the BRICS meeting and ways of strengthening cooperation between the UAE and the BRICS group. They also reviewed an array of latest regional and international developments and exchanged views on them.

Sheikh Abdullah affirmed during the meeting that the UAE and the Republic of India are linked by solid historical and strategic relations, which witnessed many prosperous stages of joint work and fruitful bilateral cooperation in all fields.

He said that the signing of the UAE-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement in 2017 and the CEPA in 2022 constituted a strong impetus and a paradigm shift in the course of Emirati-Indian relations, which saw steady growth in many fields, noting that the volume of non-oil trade exchange between the two countries rose to about Dhs189 billion last year.