(Communicated by the President's Spokesperson)

Following the visit of the Indian President last month, and ahead of a future visit to India in the coming months, President Reuven Rivlin this morning (Monday) hosted at his residence, a meeting of Tel Aviv University's India-Israel Forum, which includes 20 representatives of each country, including the two serving ambassadors, faith and community leaders, journalists, and economic and business leaders. The forum was established with the aim of strengthening and widening ties between the two countries, and was planned to meet this year in New Delhi and Tel Aviv.
 
President Rivlin welcomed the delegates and thanked them for their work to strengthen ties between the two countries. He said, "Trade between our two countries has grown in many fields - from innovation and technology to agriculture and water. But these are just the statistics - what is important is that more and more Israelis and Indians are working together to find new solutions to the key issues we face today; producing enough food, conserving water, and developing new technologies and communications."

The President spoke of the success of the visit by the Indian President, and his expectation to reciprocate the visit in the near future. He said, "I want to stress, what a great pleasure it was to host President Mukherjee in Jerusalem just a few weeks ago. While he was here we made great progress on ways to further our bilateral trade, and I was very pleased to accept his kind invitation to visit India. We are working now to arrange a visit in the very near future during which I intend to travel together with Israeli business figures to meet their Indian colleagues, all of them experts in their fields, so that we continue to increase the cooperation between our two countries and between our two peoples."

The President noted, "We are natural partners in so many ways but cannot sit back. If we don’t keep moving forward, we will find ourselves falling behind. I greatly look forward to my visit, and hope it will serve to make our friendship even more productive."

In addition to the President, co-chairmen Jamshyd N. Godrej and Stan Bergman spoke about the activities of the forum, and several members presented the President with a range of the proposals and issues raised in their discussions.