Dubai: India and Saudi Arabia will sign an agreement on foreign office consultations during the official visit of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to the kingdom in October, the first visit by a senior Indian minister to that country in six years.

Indian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Talmiz Ahmad said the exact dates and other details of Jaswant Singh's visit would be worked out in the next few weeks. The visit assumes significance in the light of Arab apprehensions over India's Middle East policy following back-to-back visits of the Indian home and foreign ministers to Israel in June-July.

"I am happy to announce that Prince Saud Al Faisal, (the Saudi Foreign Minister) has invited his Indian counterpart to visit the kingdom. This visit will take place in the middle of October," Ahmad said.

"We attach great importance to this visit. We have been informed by the Saudi leadership that they also attach similar importance to the visit," Ahmed told India Abroad News Service in a telephonic interview from Riyadh. Both countries agree on the need to substantially enhance political and economic cooperation, he added.

He said the proposed foreign office consultations agreement would help in regular and frank exchange of views between the two countries. "This will provide for regular meetings of the foreign offices in order to address bilateral, regional and international issues."

He noted India had entered similar agreements with a number of countries in the region - Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, Iran and Turkey. "We find this mechanism very useful for the frank exchange of views," Ahmad said.

He said discussions were also under way for an extradition treaty between India and Saudi Arabia. Some documents on the subject have been exchanged between the two sides recently, "but we have not reached a stage of signing it."

Both countries attached great significance to Jaswant Singh's visit as it signified India's eagerness to strengthen its ties with the Kingdom. These relations were set to grow, especially in the information technology and energy sectors, he said.

Ahmad said the Governor of Riyadh, Prince Salman, has been invited to visit New Delhi by Vice-President Krishan Kant. The visit will take place either this year or next. As part of the high-level exchange between the two countries, Prince Mamdouh bin Abdulaziz, director of the Saudi Strategic Studies Centre, will also visit India, while the Joint Commission set up by the two countries is also scheduled to meet.

The envoy said the Indian Embassy has drawn up a plan to celebrate Riyadh's selection as a cultural capital of the Middle East. The celebration will last two years and will include a photographic exhibition, a film festival, poetry evenings and a seminar on India's historical ties with the Arabian peninsula.

There will also be a three-day seminar on the late Islamic scholar Abdul Hassan Ali Nadvi and various issues of concern to the Islamic world. Indian and Saudi scholars will attend the seminar, to be held in Jeddah next year.

There are 1.5 million Indian expatriate workers in Saudi Arabia, half a million more than the second largest expatriate community and nearly double that of those from Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

India buys petroleum products worth $700 million from Saudi Arabia apart from other items.

Ahmad, addressing a news conference in Riyadh, emphasized that India's ties with Israel is not at the cost of New Delhi's historical ties with the Arab world. India is deeply committed to the Arab cause and this "commitment has been sustained throughout India's life as a free nation," he said.

"Anyone saying that India's relations with Israel will harm ties with the Arab world are showing an ignorance of history and current affairs," the leading Saudi newspaper Arab news quoted him as saying.

He recalled that India had been one of the first countries in the world to give diplomatic status to a Palestinian mission in New Delhi and later to recognise Yasser Arafat as the Palestinian president.

"Our diplomatic relations with Israel were established only in 1992, well after Palestine had commenced its peace dialogue," he noted.

Referring to the recent visits of Jaswant Singh and Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani to Israel, he told the Arab News: "New Delhi's relations with Tel Aviv are largely to do with trade and agriculture. We have occasionally purchased defence equipment to meet our security needs."

"The baseless propaganda against India is absolutely unfair and it is aimed at driving a wedge between India and its friends and brothers in the Arab world," the Indian envoy said in a separate interview with the Saudi Gazette newspaper.