NEW DELHI, 19 September 2021, (TON): The French foreign ministry said “France’s foreign affairs minister has agreed with his Indian counterpart to work on a programme to promote a truly multilateral international order.”

The ministry said in a statement “Jean-Yves Le Drian and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar also agreed during a call to deepen their strategic partnership, “based on a relationship of political trust between two great sovereign nations of the Indo-Pacific.”

It added that the two ministers agreed to meet in New York next week, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, to work “on a common programme of concrete actions to defend together a truly multilateral international order.”

For his part, Jaishankar said in a Twitter post they discussed “developments in the Indo-Pacific and Afghanistan.”

France has pushed for several years for a European strategy for boosting economic, political and defence ties in the region stretching from India and China to Japan and New Zealand. The European Union unveiled this week its plan for the Indo-Pacific.