External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will be pay a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia starting Saturday. It will be his first trip to the Kingdom as India's External Affairs Minister.
“External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar, will pay an official visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 10-12 September 2022. This will be his first visit to the Kingdom as External Affairs Minister of India,” MEA said in a statement.
Together with the Saudi Foreign Minister, HH Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Jaishankar will co-chair the inaugural Ministerial Meeting of the Committee on Political, Security, Social and Cultural Cooperation (PSSC), established within the framework of the India-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council.
The two Ministers will conduct a thorough analysis of the bilateral relationship and will go over the results of the four Joint Working Groups of the PSSC Committee, namely Political and Consular; Legal and Security; Social and Cultural; Joint Committee on Defence Cooperation, the MEA said in its release.
Over the past few months, meetings of these groups and senior officials (at the Secretary level) have been conducted. The two parties will also talk about regional and global topics of shared concern, such as their collaboration at the UN, G20, and GCC, the statement by the ministry read.
EAM will also meet with various Saudi leaders including the Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), HE Dr Nayef Falah Mubarak Al-Hajraf during the visit. Both parties will evaluate their bilateral relationships and talk about how to improve them. The External Affairs Minister will also interact with the Indian population in Saudi Arabia.
Ties between India and Saudi Arabia have improved significantly in recent years over a variety of areas, including politics, security, energy, trade, investment, health, food security, culture, and defence. Even in the midst of the Covid pandemic, the top leaders of both nations maintained frequent communication.