New Delhi: India is set to host a meeting of Quad foreign ministers on Friday that is expected to focus on the overall situation in the Indo-Pacific in view of increasing Chinese assertiveness in the region. The meeting presided over by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will be attended by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, and Australia's Penny Wong.


Ahead of the meeting, the Quad foreign ministers attended the Raisina Dialogue 2023 in the national capital:



  • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday arrived at Taj Palace to attend the Quad Foreign Ministers meet on the sidelines of Raisina Dialogue. At the Raisina Dialogue 2023, he said, "For us future is Indo-Pacific... We are rightly focused on what is happening in Ukraine. If we allow Russia to do what it is doing in Ukraine then that's a message to the aggressors everywhere that they may be able to get away with it".

    "We (Quad) are now engaged in working together to help countries to deal with humanitarian situations in natural disasters. We are working on things that are really critical. This is not a military group," he emphasised, as per news agency ANI.


  • "India is a critical power, great power in the region that there is no reshaping of the Indo-Pacific without India. We've seen that India is a civilisational power that brings a different perspective to some of the challenges of these times," Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in presence of Eternal Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, as quoted by ANI.


  • The QUAD is working in 2023 because we have a leadership less burdened by baggage, S Jaishankar remarked. "New things which came out today, we agreed on a counter-terrorism working group and SoPs for the HADR (Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief) initiative. All four nations supported the reform of the UN (United Nations)," ANI quoted him as saying.

    "We coordinated on the UN so that processes of the UN are respected and the workings of the UN stay true to its spirit. We'll be doing a Maritime Security Working Group shortly in Washington. One of the outcomes we agreed on is that listing of terrorists shouldn't be politicised," he further mentioned.


     


  • Japan's Foreign Minister Yoshima Hayashi, who has skipped the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting, is in India to attend the Quad meeting. At the Raisina Dialogue, he echoed Blinken's remarks on Quad saying, "This is not a military group. We don’t try to exclude anybody (including China). As long as China abides by international norms and laws, this is not a conflicting issue between China and Quad," ANI quoted Yoshimasa Hayashi as saying

    Earlier, he sent the minister of state for foreign affairs Kenji Yamada to the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting because the former had a "scheduling conflict" with the parliament session.


  • In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) mentioned that the meeting will be an opportunity for the ministers to continue their discussions held at their last meeting in New York in September 2022. "They will exchange views on recent developments in the Indo-Pacific region and regional issues of mutual interest, guided by their vision of a free, open, and inclusive Indo-Pacific," the MEA said.


  • The MEA informed that the foreign ministers will also review progress made by Quad in pursuit of its constructive agenda and implementation of initiatives aimed at addressing contemporary priorities of the region.


The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD), which is a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, and is maintained by talks between the member countries, is commonly referred to as Quad.


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