PM Modi spoken to Qatar's amir,agreed to to celebrate 50yrs of diplomatic relation in 2023. In BRICS, he spoken to turkey pres... will his charm work?...hv to see...
It could work. The more I read about what Dr. Jaishankar is doing, the more I admire his vision and policy. He has a simple concept here - by not participating, we are stepping down from a diplomatic platform on which we can market India. Any bilateral forum in which we can positively market our country, is a good one, even if the partner is not necessarily a friendly country.
Qatar at best is a commercial partner and at its worse, is an aloof one. We do not expect ties like UAE or Oman with them as Qatari objective in international politics is very different from these kingdoms.
1) Has Qatar been an asshole? Yes.
2) Are they doing anything to change it? Not yet.
3) So, should we not try to win over them once before going on the offensive? Definitely.
Cooperating with Turkey and Qatar cannot be compared. Whatever Turkey can supply us can be sourced from elsewhere, while Qatar plays an important role in our natural gas supply. We could technically get more gas from Russia (since they are now having an excess of it), but tankers from Vladivostok are expensive and pipelines are impossible due to the mountains in Wakhan Corridor and POK not being in our control yet. The time and money it would take for the Russians to direct all European gas to us, even if we start today, would be nothing less than 5-6 years from D1.
Let's see if Qatar can be a potential partner like UAE by trying more. If they insist on staying aloof/adversarial, we can revisit again.