New Delhi, 19/10: India on Monday joined Israel, United Arab Emirates and the United States to launch a new quadrilateral consultation for expanding economic and political cooperation in West Asia, in addition to step energy and maritime security cooperation.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid joined the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the UAE Foreign Minister, Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in a video conference.
The virtual meeting took place about a year after the Abraham Accords were signed in Washington D.C. in September 2020 started the process of normalization of relations between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi and thus opened up a new opportunity for India to go for deeper engagement with Israel without risking its relations with the UAE and the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
Jaishankar later called the video conference with his counterparts in Israel, the UAE and the US “a fruitful first meeting”, thus indicating that it was not a one-off consultation and the four nations would continue to remain engaged in the quadrilateral format. He tweeted that the virtual meeting ended with all sides agreeing on “expeditious follow-up” to the discussion they had on “working together more closely on economic growth and global issue
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