Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to
receive the highest civilian award of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – ‘Order
of Zayed’ – on the occasion of the birth centenary of Sheikh Zayed, UAE’s
founding father. PM Modi will be on a two-day visit to the United Arab Emirates
on August 23-24.
Earlier this year, in recognition of PM
Modi’s successful leadership in developing a bilateral relation between India
and the UAE, this award has been decided to confer to him.
The award is named after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan
Al Nahyan, the principal driving force behind the formation of the United Arab
Emirates, and the first President of the Union, for a period of almost 33
years.
In his second term, this will be the first visit
of PM Modi to the Gulf nation and during this visit, he is to discuss
bilateral, regional and international matters while meeting the Crown Prince of
Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Last year in February, he was invited to the UAE
as the Chief Guest of the World Government Summit. As like, Abu Dhabi’s Crown
Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has also visited India twice in
February 2016 and in January 2017. In his second visit, Nahyan was invited as
the Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations.
After UAE, Modi would also pay a visit to
Bahrain on August 24-25 which will be the first-ever Prime Ministerial visit
from India to Bahrain.
If to talk about the business forum, the
two nations – India and UAE, share an annual bilateral trade of about USD 60
billion. In fact the UAE is India’s third-largest trade partner. With this, for
crude oil India’s capital has to depend on the Abu Dhabi since it is the
fourth-largest import source for New Delhi.
Over and above PM Modi’s this time visit has
another special significance of the matter that Pakistan has been frantically
attempting to make in the global network over India’s abrogation of Article 370
from Jammu and Kashmir.
With ‘Order of Zayed’, Prime Minister Modi has
already accepted the highest honours of, six different nations, naming Russia,
South Korea, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Palestine and Afghanistan, so far. In the
current year’s April, Russia conferred ‘The Order of St Andrew the Apostle’
which is the highest as well as the oldest state decoration of Moscow. Also the
United Nations has conferred its highest environmental acknowledgement – ‘The
Champions of the Earth’ award – to Prime Minister Modi.
