Abu Dhabi // Diplomatic, social and economic cooperation between the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom continue to strengthen thanks to a taskforce charged with improving relations between the two countries, ministers acknowledged in a meeting Monday.
Attending the 11th meeting of the UAE-UK Taskforce at the Commonwealth Office in London, ministers from both countries noted the continuing progress on several fronts.
The meeting was hosted by British MP Hugh Robertson, minister of the Middle East and South Asia, and attended by a UAE delegation led by Dr Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s minister of state of foreign affairs.
Accomplishments highlighted by the ministers include: Increased collaboration on international development, especially in Somalia; Strengthened support for the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, to which both countries have committed $2 million pounds of joint funding; Increased bilateral trade that has pushed both countries closer to reaching their 2015 target of $12 billion pounds; Continued cooperation on clean energy investment, particularly in their efforts to increase low carbon investment in developing countries and ongoing progress in tackling law enforcement issues such as fraud and asset recovery.
The ministers also discussed the next steps in developing closer consular cooperation in crisis management which is important given that 100,000 British nationals live in the UAE, according to a British Embassy news release.
The taskforce was launched in 2010 by President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
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