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NEW DELHI: ��������Ƶ and India held talks on Wednesday in New Delhi, led by their foreign ministers, aimed at identifying new partnerships.

��������Ƶ’s Prince Faisal bin Farhan and India’s S. Jaishankar co-chaired the second meeting of the Ministerial Committee on Political, Security, Cultural and Social Affairs, which falls under the Saudi-India Strategic Partnership Council.

Their talks follow the council’s first leaders’ meeting last September, during which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over the signing of about 50 initial pacts.

They had also agreed to form a joint task force to enable a $100 billion Saudi investment in India.

In a livestreamed video of his opening remarks, Prince Faisal said: “The inaugural meeting of the Saudi-India Strategic Partnership Council … has set the stage for a new era of cooperation across various fields and we look forward to further enhancing the council’s capabilities and efficiency in achieving our shared objectives.”

He added: “We are confident that advancing cooperation serves our mutual interests as well as benefits the region more broadly, and I look forward to exploring the diverse aspects of our cooperation.”

��������Ƶ is home to about 2.6 million Indian nationals, making it the third-largest host country for the diaspora, after the UAE and the US.

The Kingdom is also India’s fifth-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade between the two countries at around $43 billion in 2023-2024.

Trade and investments are “important pillars” in Saudi-India relations, Jaishankar said during the meeting as he highlighted recent efforts to boost cooperation, including in technology and renewable energy.

“Saudi’s Vision 2030 and Viksit Bharat 2047 hold complementarities for our industries to build new partnerships. I am glad to note that our businesses are collaborating intensively,” he said, referring to the Kingdom’s transformation plan and India’s goal to become a developed nation.

“While we may be time-tested friends, but our partnership is premised on progress and focused on the future.”

BAKU: A fresh draft of a UN climate deal released Wednesday proposes concrete options to raise funding for poorer countries, but leaves unresolved sticking points that have long delayed an agreement.
Landing a new accord to boost money for climate action in developing countries is the top priority of negotiators at the UN COP29 summit in Azerbaijan.
But it is deeply contentious, and consensus has eluded negotiators from nearly 200 nations for the better part of a year.
Most developing countries favor an annual commitment from wealthy countries of at least $1.3 trillion, according to the latest draft of the long-sought climate finance pact.
This figure is more than 10 times the $100 billion annually that a small pool of developed countries — among them the United States, the European Union and Japan — currently pay.
Some donors are reluctant to promise large new amounts of public money from their budgets at a time when they face economic and political pressure at home.
An earlier version of the draft was rejected outright by developing countries, which considered the proposed terms weighted too heavily toward wealthy nations.


Fresh submissions were called, and the new document summarises three broad positions.
The first argues that rich, industrialized nations most responsible for climate change to date pay from their budgets.
The second option calls for other countries to share the burden, a key demand of developed countries, while the third puts forward a mix of the two.
A bloc of least-developed nations, mostly from Africa, are asking for $220 billion while small-island states at threat from rising seas want $39 billion.
“The new text proposes more concrete options for reaching an agreement on the total amount, as well as specific objectives for the least developed or most vulnerable countries,” said Friederike Roder from Global Citizen, a non-government organization.
“Unfortunately, this search for precision stops there. The proposals aimed at clearly defining what constitutes climate finance, and ensuring close and transparent monitoring, remain insufficient,” she told AFP.
The latest 34-page draft reflects all the options on the table, said David Waskow, director at the World Resources Institute, a think tank.
“Negotiators now need to work to boil it down to some key decisions for the ministers to wrestle with next week,” he said.
COP29 runs until November 22 but climate talks often run into overtime.