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With Quad Summit to be held by November, members focus on deliverables
Quad Leaders’ Summit likely in November due to elections in India and US. Focus on work programme for deliverables in maritime security, infrastructure.
New Delhi:With the Quad Leaders’ Summit unlikely to be held before November because of elections in India and the US, the focus has shifted to framing a work programme that will lead to deliverables in areas ranging from maritime security to infrastructure, people familiar with the matter said.
An initial plan for leaders of Quad member states – India, Australia, Japan and the US – to meet in January fell through because US President Joe Biden was unable to take up India’s invitation to be the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations.
As India will head into its election cycle by April and the US presidential election is scheduled for November 5, the earliest available window for the Quad Leaders’ Summit is sometime in November, the people said on condition of anonymity. This will be preceded by the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting to be hosted by Japan in the summer. While no dates have been finalised for this meeting, it is unlikely to be held before July, they said.
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“The range of Quad working groups had already been tasked to frame a work programme with deliverables in January and this work is continuing,” one of the people cited above said.
One key area the four Quad members are looking at for providing deliverables for the planned summit is economic security initiatives, which includes critical minerals, resilient supply chains and infrastructure projects, the people said. For example, in the case of critical minerals, the work is focused on sourcing rare earths, the needs of the Quad members and their vulnerabilities, the people said.
While the Quad members have always highlighted an inclusive agenda to foster an open, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific, much of the work is aimed at countering China in crucial areas such as infrastructure and telecommunications by offering alternatives that are transparent to countries in the region.
Important work is also being done by the health security working group, which evolved from the earlier vaccine working group created during the Covid-19 pandemic, the people said. This includes direct contacts between health authorities of the four countries to prepare for future epidemics and medical emergencies.
In the field of maritime security, the Quad members are working to build the capacity of partners across the Indo-Pacific to maintain maritime security and maritime domain awareness and to ensure that the region’s waters are used according to international law.
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This includes the Quad’s launch of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), which uses commercial satellite data to enable partners to monitor their waters to counter unregulated fishing and illegal shipping. As part of IPMDA, HawkEye 360, a leading defence technology company, was awarded a contract last October to provide satellite data and analytics to ensure the Indo-Pacific remains open and stable.
