NEW DELHI: The next few days will be like a prelude to the Quad as Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio will be on a two-day visit to Delhi. This will be followed by a virtual meeting between Prime Minister Modi and Australian Prime Minister Scott
Morrison.
The Quad Summit, which will also be attended by US President Joe Biden, will be held in Japan sometime next month. So there is likely to be a spillover of discussions that take place in India in the next few days in the forthcoming Quad meet.
PM Kishida will be in Delhi on the 19th and 20th for the 14th India-Japan Annual Summit. This will be the first meeting of PM Modi and PM Kishida. The previous India-Japan Annual Summit took place in Tokyo in October 2018.
Both India and Japan have multi-faceted cooperation within the ambit of their ‘Special Strategic and Global Partnership’. The summit will provide an opportunity for both sides to review and strengthen the bilateral cooperation in diverse areas as well as exchange views on regional and global issues of mutual interest so as to advance their partnership for peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.
This will be followed by the second India-Australia Virtual Summit on March 21st. It will be attended by PM Modi and PM Morrison. The first virtual summit between the two was held on June 4th, 2020 when the relationship between India and Australia was raised to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
"The leaders of India and Australia are expected to commit to closer cooperation in trade, critical minerals, migration and mobility, and education, among others," said Arindam Bagchi, MEA spokesperson.
Views on regional and international issues of mutual interest will also be discussed by the leaders. The summit highlights the importance attached by both countries to their bilateral relations as also their close cooperation on regional and global issues.
The India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership has maintained the momentum of an upward trajectory with both countries continuing to collaborate closely, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, in wide-ranging areas including science and
technology, defence, cyber, critical and strategic materials, water resource management, as well as public administration and governance.
PM Modi and PM Morrison met in Washington DC for the first in-person meeting after the Covid-19 pandemic in September 2021 on the margins of the Quad Leaders’ Summit and jointly launched the Infrastructure for Resilient Island States (IRIS) in Glasgow on the margins of the COP26 in November 2021.