Sushma Swaraj attends 1st India-Arab ministerial meet

Swaraj on her two-day visit will hold bilateral meetings with Foreign Ministers of a number of Arab League countries, including her Bahraini counterpart Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa.

She also met Bahrain's king Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa later on Saturday. This is her second visit to Bahrain as the External Affairs Minister. She last visited Bahrain for a bilateral meeting in 2014. 

King Hamad and Swaraj together watched India’s Sarang Team with Dhruv helicopters and Light Combat Aircraft Tejas perform aerobatics.

On the sidelines of the air show, Swaraj and the King discussed an entire gamut of bilateral ties.  India and Arab League are expected to deliberate on the whole gamut of bilateral issues including trade and investment, energy and culture among others.

A number of wide-ranging issues from terrorism, security to tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the execution of a Shia cleric in the Kingdom are also expected to be discussed. 

The Saudi-Iran spat could come up for discussion in terms of regional stability even as Iran is not part of the Arab League. Saudi Arabia's announcement of the execution of prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others, garnered condemnation from Shiites across 

the region. 

Anti-terror cooperation is expected to be a key area of collaboration between India and the Arab League. Saudi Arabia recently launched a 34-member military coalition of Muslim countries to fight terror. Pakistan was included in the coalition but it has been wary of joining the group as Iran with which it has good relations is not part of the alliance. India’s trade with most of the Arab countries has grown steadily in the last few years.