NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Japan on Friday to attend the annual summit of the G7 grouping and the third in-person Quad leaders' meeting.
Modi arrived in Hiroshima on the first leg of his three-nation trip to Japan, Papua New Guinea and Australia and is expected to take part in over 40 engagements.
PM Modi has a tight schedule on Saturday which includes bilateral meetings with leaders of G7 and also the Quad meeting. He is also scheduled to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Sources say that PM Modi will first take part in a bilateral meeting with Japanese PM Fumio Kishida on Saturday and will then proceed to unveil a Bust of Mahatma Gandhi.
"It will be a pleasure to meet PM Kishida again. My presence at the G7 Summit is particularly meaningful as India holds the G20 Presidency this year. I look forward to exchanging views with the G7 countries and other invited partners on challenges that the world faces and the need to collectively address them," said PM Modi.
Later on Saturday, he will attend the Quad Leaders summit alongside US President Joe Biden, Australian PM Anthony Albanese and PM Kishida. The Quad summit was originally scheduled to be held in Sydney but it will now take place in Hiroshima as Joe Biden postponed his visit to Australia to focus on crucial debt-ceiling talks in Washington.
The Indian Prime Minister will also hold bilateral meetings with the state heads of Ukraine, South Korea, Vietnam and France along the sidelines of the G7 Summit. The G7 bloc comprises Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada and Italy, as well as the European Union.
Modi's meeting with Zelenskyy will be their first in-person meeting since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the former Soviet state on February 24, 2022. In the past, Modi held telephonic conversations with Zelenskky urging him to resolve the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.
Notably, PM Modi had also communicated the same to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2022 SCO summit in Sarakhand and reiterated that is "not an era of war."
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said, " India’s regular participation in the G7 Summits (this is the 10 time that India has been invited) clearly points to increasing recognition that India should be a part of any serious effort to resolve global challenges, including those of peace, security, development and environmental preservation."
From Japan, he will travel to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea where he will host the third summit of the Forum for India: Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC) on May 22 jointly with Prime Minister James Marape. Modi's visit to Papua New Guinea will be the first ever by any Indian prime minister.
In the third and final leg of the trip, Modi will visit Australia from May 22 to 24.