Quad summit in Hiroshima, Biden thanks leaders for flexibility: White House

Quad leaders agreed to hold the summit in Hiroshima ‘to ensure that the four leaders could come together to mark the Quad’s progress over the past year’

Washington With US President Joe Biden postponing the Australia leg of his visit and the subsequent cancellation of the Quad summit in Sydney, Quad leaders will now meet in Hiroshima on Saturday on the sidelines of the G7 summit, the White House announced on Friday.

(From left) Australian PM Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden and Indian PM Narendra Modi are greeted by Japanese PM Fumio Kishida (right), during their arrival to the Quad leaders summit at Kantei Palace in Tokyo, Japan, on May 24, 2022. (AP)

HT had reported right after the summit’s cancellation that Quad leaders — Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, PM Anthony Albanese of Australia and PM Kishida Fumio of Japan — were planning to meet in Hiroshima instead.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that after Biden’s postponement, Quad leaders agreed to hold the summit in Hiroshima “to ensure that the four leaders could come together to mark the Quad’s progress over the past year”.

“Along with sharing strategic assessments, the leaders will welcome new forms of Quad cooperation on secure digital technology, submarine cables, infrastructure capacity building, and maritime domain awareness,” the statement said.

Biden, according to the statement, also thanked the other three leaders for their flexibility.

In a tweet announcing PM Modi’s arrival in Hiroshima, ministry of external affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, too, said that besides attending the G7 summit and his other bilateral engagements, the PM will attend the Quad summit.

The Quad foreign ministers — S Jaishankar, Anthony Blinken, Penny Wong and Yoshimasa Hayashi — had met in Delhi in early March to take stock of the grouping’s activities and pushed forward cooperation in more domains, including in multilateral organisations.

They had also participated in a panel at the Raisina Dialogue in a sign of the increasing comfort levels among members and greater public ownership of Quad. Quad working groups on a range of issues have also been working at the bureaucratic level over the past year. The leaders’ level summit will provide an opportunity to the four countries to review the work that has been done so far, advance their agenda of cooperation and discuss the geopolitical challenges of the times, including China’s activities in the region.