Swaraj to co-chair India-UAE Joint Commission Meeting in Abu Dhabi this week

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will co-chair the 12th session of the India-UAE Joint Commission Meeting for Economic and Technical Cooperation with her counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi during her official visit to the Gulf country from December 3-4.

With nearly USD 50 billion bilateral trade, the two countries are one of the largest trade partners for each other and have made robust investments bilaterally. The UAE is the sixth-largest source of Indian oil imports and hosts a 3.3 million-strong Indian community.

"We look forward to the visit of the External Affairs Minister to Abu Dhabi to co-chair the India-UAE Joint Commission," India's Ambassador to the UAE, Navdeep Singh Suri, said.

Suri said the minister's visit is an important opportunity to continue the bilateral dialogue at the highest levels of government, to share views on major regional and global issues and to give a further boost to our comprehensive strategic partnership.

"Such high-level visit helps in adding a new building block in areas like energy and food security, economy, defense and much else," he said.

Meanwhile, the External Affairs Ministry has said that with the exchange of visits at the highest-level in the recent past, the bilateral relationship has been elevated to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

Along with the UAE Foreign Minister, Swaraj would inaugurate a Gandhi-Zayed Digital Museum in Abu Dhabi to mark the celebrations of 150 years of Mahatma Gandhi's birth and centenary celebrations of the birth of Shaikh Zayed, founder of the modern UAE.

She would also interact with the Indian community in Abu Dhabi.