PM Modi to hold bilateral talks with UAE’s MBZ during G-20 Summit

UAE's President bin Zayed dialled PM Modi on August 24 to congratulate on Chandrayaan-3's success and thank him for BRICS support.

Published on: Sep 6, 2023, 08:24:23 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Despite being hard-pressed for time as a host of the G-20 summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with his close friend UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed during the multilateral event over the weekend. UAE has been invited as a guest for the G-20 summit by India.

File photo of PM Narendra Modi and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

While slotting of bilateral meetings with PM Modi is still a work in progress with the Indian leader currently focused on the ASEAN summit at Jakarta, it is understood that G-20 chief coordinator Harsh Shringla, Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla and I and B Secretary Apurva Chandra made a two-hour presentation before the PM on September 4 on full arrangements and security for the G-20 summit. It is learnt that the Union Council of Ministers will be briefed about different aspects of G-20 this morning. The G-20 substantive negotiations are being conducted by G-20 sherpa Amitabh Kant and Ajay Seth, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance.

While UAE did not ask for a state visit, it is learnt that this would be Mohammed Bin Zayed’s first visit to India since he was appointed as President of the Emirate last year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited UAE on July 15 while returning from France.

During his visit to India for the G-20, President Mohammed bin Zayed or MBZ as he is called will announce UAE joining the Global Biofuels Alliance, which was started by PM Modi and has many members including the US. The UAE ruler called up PM Modi on August 24 after India supported the Emirate's candidature for the BRICS membership and particularly congratulated the Indian leader for Chandrayaan 3 landing on the south pole of the moon.

UAE is a close ally of India and one of the few countries that have started local currency trade in oil and gold with India. It was during his visit to UAE on July 15 that ₹12.84 crore worth of gold was traded with the Emirate in Indian currency and on August 14, USD 75 million oil trade took place between the two allies using Indian Rupee, Dirhams and USD. The two countries have close bilateral cooperation with UAE air tankers refuelling Rafale fighters en-route to India from France in 2020.

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

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