After Imran Khan, a UAE minister has praised India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for deftly defending New Delhi's foreign policy, without taking any side despite pressures from the West. UAE's Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Omar Sultan Al Olama on Wednesday said he was impressed by Jaishankar's ability to project India's foreign policy globally.
Speaking at an event, Olama said historically, the world was unipolar, bipolar, or tripolar, where one had to choose sides. "I am very impressed by your Minister of Foreign Affairs. I see some of his speeches. One thing is very clear for both the UAE and India, which is we don't need to choose sides," he was quoted as saying by the news agency IANS.
Olama is the second foreign minister to publicly praise Jaishankar. Earlier, former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan praised India's foreign minister for not giving in to the West's pressure to not buy discounted oil from Russia.
Khan even played a clip of Jaishankar's response to a question on whether India was funding Russia's war in Ukraine by buying oil from Moscow. To that question, Jaishankar had said that India's total import of oil from Moscow in a month was probably less than what Europe bought in an afternoon. His response had gone viral on social media, and Imran Khand played that video during a rally in Lahore to target the Shehbaz Sharif government in Pakistan.
After Russia attacked Ukraine, the Western countries and European Union imposed heavy sanctions on Moscow. However, they kept the energy out as Europe is highly dependent on Russian gas. Hit by sanctions, Russia offered discounted oil to India, which accepted the offer as crude prices were shooting up and inflation was getting out of control.
Jaishankar's one more response created a huge buzz when he reminded the world what the West had done in Afghanistan. During an event in April, Jaishankar was told that Russia attacked Ukraine because it was a democracy, and everything Moscow was doing in the former Soviet republic was against international law.
To this, the EAM said there are equally pressing issues in other parts of the world. He mentioned Afghanistan and the challenges in Asia. Jaishankar said when the rules-based based order was under challenge in Asia, the advice from Europe was - "do more trade". "At least we are not giving that advice," he said.
Jaishankar then mentioned Afghanistan and asked which part of the rules-based order justified what the world did there.