Mumbai (Reuters) – India said on Friday that Saudi Aarabia would hold mutual interests and sensitivities between the two countries, two days after Riyad signed a mutual defense act with the old enemy Pakistan of New Delhi.
Saudi Arabia and nuclear armed Pakistan signed the pact on Wednesday, and although few details were made public, analysts said it could mean that Riyad will have a de facto nuclear shield under the agreement.
The agreement, which came in the midst of diplomatic unrest in the Middle East and only a few months after a deadly India-Pakistan conflict, says that each aggression against both countries is considered an aggression against both.
“India and Saudi Arabia have a broad strategic partnership that has been considered considerably in recent years,” said spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Randhir Jaiswal Reporters during a weekly news briefing.
“We expect this strategic partnership to take mutual interests and sensitivities into account,” he said.
Saudi Aarabia is one of the best exporters from Petroleum to India and the two countries have agreed this year to stimulate collaboration in the stocks of crude oil and liquid petroleum gas.
The two countries also investigated joint projects in refineries and petrochemicals, said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this year.
On Thursday, the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was aware that the pact had been considered and that it would study the implications for New Delhi.
Pakistan, the only nuclear armed Muslim nation, is one of the poorer countries in Asia, but has an army of more than 600,000 soldiers to defend themselves against his much larger opponent, India.
The neighbors fought three major wars, along with countless collisions, including the four -day conflict in May that their toughest fights were in decades.
(Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Edit by Yp Rajesh, Aidan Lewis)
