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Friday April 19, 2024

Modi to visit Palestine, meet Abbas during ME tour

By AFP
February 06, 2018

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Palestine during a brief tour of the Middle East, the foreign ministry said on Monday, just weeks after hosting Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Modi will meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in an overture seen as India’s effort to balance its decades-old support for the occupied territories against its growing closeness to Israel. The Indian premier will visit Ramallah first on his three-day tour of the region between February 9 and 12, which will also take in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Foreign ministry official B. Bala Bhaskar said Modi’s visit to Palestine would be his first, though the Indian premier has met Abbas on three previous occasions.