India-Qatar Talk Transformational Ties in Sailors’ Shadow
PM Narendra Modi holds talk with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani (Image credit Mea India)
Sailor Purnendu Tiwari’s Travel Ban Casts Shadow on Qatar Emir’s India Visit
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, February 18: India and Qatar on Tuesday resolved to elevate bilateral relations to strategic partnership. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held delegation level talks with Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani at the Hyderabad House on Tuesday.
“India and Qatar have agreed to raise the bilateral relationship to the strategic partnership,” said special secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs Arun Kumar Chatterjee. He said that India and Qatar inked ties for transformational relationship.
Union Minister for Commerce Piyush Goyal said that “India and Qatar will work to double bilateral ties in the next five years”. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi by receiving the Emir of Qatar at the airport has given the ambit of the significance of the visit,” said Goyal.
Modi has last received the UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the airport in 2023. Nahyan had come to attend the Vibrant Gujarat Summit.
“Both leaders decided to elevate India-Qatar relations to a Strategic Partnership with focus on trade, energy, investments, innovation, technology, food security, culture and people-to-people ties,” said the MEA at a media briefing. It also said that “they exchanged views on regional and global issues of mutual interest”.
But the travel ban on Purnendu Tiwari stays an irritant on the bilateral relations. The Emir of Qatar had commuted the death sentences given to eight Indian sailors on “unspecified charges”. But Tiwari is still in Qatar while seven sailors have returned to India.
“We hope that Qatar lifts that travel ban on Tiwari and allows him to come back to India,” said foreign policy analyst Atul Aneja while discussing the visit of Emir with All India Radio.
While Goyal said that the bilateral trade target has been agreed upon for doubling, the 2023-24 data showed that the two-war trade is on a decline. The bilateral trade between India and Qatar slipped to $14 billion in 2023-24 from over $18 billion in the previous year.
Qatar releases 8 Indians facing death convictions; Emirate sights shifting geostrategic sands
But India will hope that ties with Qatar will help the country position well in the geopolitics in the region. Qatar geographically is smaller in comparison to the likes of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
But Qatar emerged as a key peace broker between Israel and the Hamas. Also, Doha had hosted the peace talks between the US and the Taliban in the run up to the withdrawal of the American forces from the war-ravaged nation.
India is also hoping to wrap up the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the near future. Qatar is an influential member of the GCC.
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