Addressing the 2nd India-Arab Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (IAFMM) here, External Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday made it clear to Pakistan, without naming the neighbouring country, that it will have to bear the consequences of any terror attack on Indian territory.
Highlighting the threat posed to humankind by terrorism, he said cross-border terrorism is particularly unacceptable as it violates the basic principle of international relations and diplomacy. ‘’States targeted by terrorism have the right to defend themselves and will understandably exercise it,’’ he asserted.
Jaishankar said it is essential for the global community to strengthen cooperation to combat the scourge of terrorism. ‘’Zero-tolerance for terrorism must be an uncompromising universal norm,’’ he added.
The minister said the meeting between India and the Arab nations is taking place at a time when the global order is undergoing transformation for a variety of reasons. The landscape of West Asia has undergone a dramatic change in the last year. This obviously impacts all Arab nations as well as India, which is in the proximate region.
Jaishankar said India has a strong partnership with Arab nations. With some of the Arab nations, it enjoys a strategic partnership. Much of the relationship is rooted in history when the two sides exchanged goods, people and ideas.
He said that in the contemporary world, the collaboration has taken a different form. Some of the countries in the region have large Indian expatriate communities, he noted, adding that the region remains a key source of energy for India. India, he said, looks forward to a more contemporary dimension to the partnership in areas like digital, space and start-ups, etc.
The minister also expressed concern over the situation in Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria.
The (IAFMM) meeting is happening after a gap of ten years. The first such meeting was held in 2016 in Bahrain. At the first meeting, the ministers identified five priority verticals of cooperation: economy, energy, education, media, and culture and proposed a set of activities across these verticals.
The 2nd IAFMM is expected to build on our existing cooperation, expanding and deepening this partnership, the Ministry of External Affairs said.
The IAFMM is the highest institutional mechanism driving this partnership, which was formalised in March 2002 when India and the League of Arab States (LAS) signed an MoU institutionalising the process of dialogue.