NEW DELHI — Senior officials of India and member countries of the Arab League today agreed on a series of measures to rejuvenate the "historic and civilizational ties that exist between the Arab World and India."

The measures include an Arab-India Cultural Festival, a symposium on Arab-India cooperation in the field of energy, the first-ever Arab-India University Presidents’ Conference, a symposium on Arab-India Cooperation in the field of media and an overarching meeting called the Arab-India Partnership Conference.

The measures were finalized at a meeting under the auspices of the Arab-India Cooperation Forum via video conference. Sanjay Bhattacharyya, secretary in India’s foreign ministry in charge of relations with the Arab world, and Mohamed Abu Al-Kheir, assistant foreign minister and permanent representative of Egypt to the League of Arab States co-chaired the meeting.

It was attended by senior officials from all the Arab states and India, as well as the General Secretariat of the League of Arab States, the Indian ministry said in a readout of the meeting. "They look forward to holding the second ministerial meeting of the Arab-India Cooperation Forum, in India, at a convenient date for both sides," the readout said.

Referring to the "unprecedented challenges" due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the senior officials "discussed ongoing collaboration between India and the Arab States in the fields of diagnostics and treatment, and exchanged views on respective national approaches to post-Covid economic recovery." — WAM