'Missed opportunity?' Shashi Tharoor as PM Modi skips Gaza Summit being attended by Trump, others

Kirti Vardhan Singh, MoS for external affairs, will represent PM Modi at a peace summit that is being attended by Trump and other leaders in Egypt on Monday.

Updated on: Oct 13, 2025, 20:32:57 IST

By HT News Desk

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In what looked like a reference at Prime Minister Narendra Modi deciding to skip attending the Gaza Peace Summit in Egypt, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday said India’s presence event, at the level of a minister of state, stands in stark contrast to the heads of state gathered there.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor during the Monsoon session of Parliament (PTI)

Minister of state (MoS) for external affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh will represent Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a peace summit in Egypt's Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday.

PM Modi was invited for the summit that is expected to be attended by US President Donald Trump and nearly 20 other world leaders.

“Strategic restraint or missed opportunity?” asked Shashi Tharoor in a post on X on Monday.

He clarified that while this was “no reflection on Kirti Vardhan Singh, whose competence is not in question”, but “given the galaxy of grandees present, India’s choice could be seen as signalling a preference for strategic distance, which our statements don't convey”.

And for reasons of protocol access alone, India's voice at the Summit on issues of reconstruction and regional stability may carry less weight than it could have, Tharoor further said in the X post.

“In a region reshaping itself, our relative absence is puzzling,” he said.

In a momentous development, Hamas released the remaining Israeli hostages on Monday, potentially bringing the fighting in Gaza to a halt after two years of Israel's offensive that was launched after the Palestinian militant outfit on October 7, 2023, led a siege in southern Israel.

The 'Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit', being hosted by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, will discuss ways to bring lasting peace to Gaza as well as to the wider Middle-East. It will be co-chaired by al-Sisi and Donald Trump.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italy's Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres are among leaders attending the summit.

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