PM Modi in Abu Dhabi on July 15 to complete the India-France-UAE triad

PM Modi will be hosted by UAE ruler and President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan with India-France-UAE part of the trilateral cooperation initiative.

Published on: Jul 12, 2023, 08:58:11 IST

By Shishir Gupta

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with top CEOs, thought leaders and influencers on July 13 in Paris even as he makes a day visit to Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates on his way back to India.

PM Modi will make a stop-over at Abu Dhabi to meet President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to further cement bilateral ties with UAE.

While the list of CEOs, leaders and influencers is on the verge of being finalized, the French Republic is ready with a royal treatment for the visiting dignitary as President Emmanuel Macron awaits the visit from his friend and close ally Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

It is understood that on his way back to India, PM Modi will make a stop-over at Abu Dhabi to meet President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to further cement bilateral ties with UAE. While returning from the US last month, PM Modi had paid a bilateral visit to Egypt as India’s strong engagement with the Middle-East took a new dimension. PM Modi met former Saudi justice minister and secretary general of Muslim World League Sheikh Mohammed bin AbdulKarim Al-Issa on Tuesday and discussed the developments in the Islamic world. Dr Al-Issa is a proponent of moderate Islam and is said to be very close to Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.

India-France-UAE are part of the trilateral cooperation initiative, announced on September 19, 2022 in New York, with Abu Dhabi part of the strong defence cooperation bond between the three countries. It was the UAE that allowed its Airbus 330 tankers to refuel Rafale fighters in mid-air while making their way from France to India at the peak of global pandemic. Last month, India, France and UAE joined in the first ever trilateral naval exercise in the Gulf of Oman on June 7, 2023 with INS Tarkash, French ship Surcouf with helicopters, Rafale fighters and UAE Navy maritime patrol aircraft participating the exercise as part of the initiative to keep Indian Ocean secure from traditional and non-traditional threats in the maritime environment. The basic idea behind the trilateral exercise was to ensure safety of seal-lanes for commercial trade and allow freedom of navigation. France has close military and political ties with UAE and has a permanent base at Al Dhafra to ward off air and missile threat to Abu Dhabi from state and non-state actors.

While the Modi government is tight-lipped about the Abu Dhabi leg, it is understood that he will spend nearly a day in UAE on July 15 as the two countries along with US and Saudi Arabia are also planning to jointly develop rail-road network apart from taking up other major infrastructures in the Middle-East.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Pm Modi

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.