The four foreign ministers met on February 11 to discuss and translate their agenda for on-the-ground discussions and goals, be it vaccine delivery, key technologies and emerging technologies. Of course, a belligerent China will be the elephant in the room.
Four foreign ministers: Marise Payne, S Jaishankar, Antony Blinken and Yoshimasa Hayashi.
The foreign ministers of the powerful security bloc will meet in Australia on Friday to implement arrangements on the Indo-Pacific region, vaccine delivery, critical and emerging technologies and the global security environment, ahead of the Quartet summit in April-May this year.
As Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar traveled to the Quartet ministerial meeting via Qatar this morning, India made it clear that security groups should consolidate their gains and reflect policies on the ground before discussing an expanded arrangement. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshisei Lin and Australian Foreign Minister Marise Ann Payne will attend the important meeting at a time when China is belligerent with its Quartet partners over Taiwan and is delaying a full resolution of the May 2020 issue. Ladakh position of the month – with India.
After attending the four-party meeting, EAM Jaishankar will hold bilateral discussions with his Australian counterpart and possibly meet Prime Minister Scott Morrison as the two countries rapidly cemented relations after 2014. Today, Australia is one of the prime partners of the Prime Minister of India, and Minister Narendra Modi has personally invested in improving bilateral relations with Canberra as the two middle powers agree on many issues.
While the ranks of the Quartet have been elevated from foreign secretary in 2017 to foreign minister in 2019 and summit in 2021, the group will be linked via a diplomatic blockchain without a permanent secretariat, as it is a thing of the past. The meeting is significant because the foreign ministers will translate QUAD policy on the ground, rather than reducing it to rhetoric. For example, the four leaders will sit together to transform vaccine deliveries on the ground by providing leading countries with specific tasks such as manufacturing and funding Covid vaccines.
Leaders will also discuss building trusted supply chains for emerging and critical technologies such as 5G, 6G, artificial intelligence and quantum computing as the Quartet of Ministers will consider the Ukraine crisis and China’s relationship with Russia and its belligerence towards Taiwan . “Rather than arguing about the expansion of the Quad, it is time to transform policy on the ground. The era of symbolism is over, the Quad needs to be operational,” said a former foreign secretary.
At the Melbourne summit, Quartet ministers are expected to develop a policy to coordinate the partners’ diplomatic bureaucracy, which is the biggest obstacle moving forward. “It’s one thing to make a statement on a vaccine, but given the kind of political overtones a vaccine has acquired, the Quartet ministers need to determine who will manufacture the vaccine and which countries will prioritize its supply,” said a former Indian ambassador to the US.
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