Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will leave for Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on May 18 on a five-day tour to deepen security and defence cooperation with a region which has traditionally been viewed only as politically important.
“While political ties with the region has been deepening over the years, security and defence cooperation were the missing pieces in the relationship. It had been low key,” Defence Ministry sources said on Friday.
As India’s strategic interests stretched to the Middle East and beyond, the thinking in India too had changed. One official explained: “The big thing that happened in the recent past is the evacuation of Indian nationals from Yemen under Operation Rahat. It gave a sense of what our forces have to face. Yemen made it very clear that we need to focus on structures and processes in these countries.”
First bilateral visit Officials said that Mr. Parrikar’s trip to the UAE would be the first bilateral visit by an Indian Defence Minister and the idea was to take forward the understanding reached during Mr. Modi’s visit last year. “We could become a source of production of military products for the UAE,” an official said.
Oman is India’s strongest defence partner in the Gulf and both sides have extensive defence and security ties in place. Oman has been hosting Indian warships on anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden.
The Indian Air Force team returning from Red Flag exercises in the US will do ‘hop-in’ exercises with their UAE counterparts from May 24-28. Naval visits have become a regular feature and hydrographic cooperation is also on the agenda. India is looking to UAE for help in logistics management.
“Our relations are in a different magnitude,” sources said and the visit aims to transform them to the next level.
Incidentally, Mr. Parrikar’s visit to the region overlaps with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Iran and is seen as a way of balancing India’s strategic interests in the region.
