UAE played a role in bringing India, Pak for talks: Envoy to US

NEW DELHI: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has played a role in bringing together India and Pakistan for talks aimed at cooling down the escalation over the Kashmir issue and getting bilateral relations “back to a healthy level”, the UAE envoy to the US has said.

The remarks by ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, who also played a key role in facilitating the September 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE, mark the first time a senior official of the UAE has publicly acknowledged the country’s role in efforts to normalise relations between India and Pakistan.

“We try to be helpful where we have influence with two different countries. So, India and Pakistan was the most recent one... To the extent we can bring people together and create a winwin environment... we’ve been doing a lot of that I would say in the last two to three years,” Al Otaiba said.

NEW DELHI : The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has played a role in bringing together India and Pakistan for talks aimed at cooling down the escalation over the Kashmir issue and getting bilateral relations “back to a healthy level”, the UAE envoy to the US has said.

The remarks by ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, who also played a key role in facilitating the September 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE, mark the first time a senior official of the United Arab Emirates has publicly acknowledged the country’s role in efforts to normalise relations between India and Pakistan.

The comments, made during a virtual discussion between Al Otaiba and former US national security adviser HR McMaster that was organised by the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, came in the wake of media reports about mediation between India and Pakistan by the UAE.

Al Otaiba brought up the issue by himself while replying to a question on whether the UAE can persuade Pakistan to play a more meaningful role in finding a settlement in Afghanistan.

He referred to a news article that came out about three weeks ago that “highlighted the role the UAE played in bringing the Kashmir escalation down and sort of created a ceasefire, hopefully ultimately leading to restoring diplomats and getting the relationship back to a healthy level”.

Al Otaiba was apparently referring to a report by Bloomberg that spoke of the UAE’s role in facilitating secret negotiations between India and Pakistan that led to the militaries of the two countries recommitting themselves to the 2003 ceasefire on the LoC from February 25.

“We try to be helpful where we have influence with two different countries. So, India and Pakistan was the most recent one but you remember about three years ago, we also brought the Ethiopians and the Eritreans together for a peace deal which seems to not be doing too well right now,” he said.

“To the extent we can bring people together and create a win-win environment, whether it’s Ethiopia and Eritrea, Pakistan and India or UAE and Israel, we’ve been doing a lot of that I would say in the last two to three years,” he added.

Asked by McMaster whether it would be worthwhile for the UAE to pursue such a course given the role of the Pakistan Army in such matters and the low prospects for a better relationship between India and Pakistan, Al Otaiba replied: “Absolutely, they might not sort of become best friends but at least we want to get it to a level where it’s functional, it’s operational, where they are speaking to each other, where there’s lines of communication and that’s our goal.