New Challenges
India's presence as "guest of honour" at the OIC foreign ministers' conference in Abu Dhabi on March 1-a meeting at which, ironically, the Pakistani foreign minister was absent-marks a seachange in India's ties with the OIC.
The first Islamic summit at Rabat in 1969 established Saudi leadership over the Islamic world and its control over the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). From 1971, this became the principal platform for the world's Muslim nations.
The kingdom used the OIC platform to promote its own interests: the OIC robustly backed Iraq during its war with Iran and then turned against it when it
