The Quad summit on Friday will see Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga come together for its first online meet.
While both Biden and Modi will participate in the meeting of the Quadrilateral group of nations, it has not been announced whether the two leaders will have an exclusive meeting with each other.
What is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue?
— Also known as the ‘Qaud’ it was set up by Japan prime minister Shinzo Abe August 2007 and then Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh was part of the initial set up.
— It was set up to counter China’s growing influence in Asia.
— However, in 2008, while Singh had said India was not part of any efforts against China, Australia had also left the group.
— It was revived in 2017 during the ASEAN Summit to counter China’s assertiveness in the region.
— Friday’s meet will be the first since the 2017 revival.
What to expect?
— The meeting is expected to cover a range of topics from the security situation in the to economic cooperation between the countries and climate crisis.
— A senior US administration official told Reuters that the group may announce financing agreements to support an increase in manufacturing capacity for coronavirus vaccines in India.
— US Secretary of State Tony Blinken told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing, “We have a Quad summit meeting on Friday with President (Joe) Biden, and I expect we’ll see something on vaccines coming out of that summit. There are other things that we’re looking at that we’re working on in the days and weeks and months ahead to make sure that we are a leading international actor in creating greater access to vaccines.”
— Nikkei newspaper reported on Thursday, that apart from the vaccine issue, the US, Japan, India and Australia will work together to secure rare earth metals that are essential to the production of electric car motors and other products.
China’s reaction
— China, meanwhile, has reacted to the news of the Quad meet saying it hoped that this was to promote peace in the region and not “the opposite”.
— Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, “We hope the relevant countries will keep in mind the common interests of the regional countries uphold the principles of openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation and do things that are conducive to regional peace stability and prosperity rather than the opposite.”
— While China has been engaged in vaccine diplomacy, as has India, the country claimed that it is opposed to vaccine nationalism and politicisation of vaccine cooperation.
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