New Delhi: As heads of Quad nations will be meeting in Japan next week, US President Joe Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Formed with Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, Quad was an initiative of the Trump Administration, which Joe Biden has elevated to the leadership level. There have so far been three summits, two of them virtual.
“We believe that this summit will demonstrate both in substance and in vision that democracies can deliver and that these four nations working together will defend and uphold the principles of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” US National Security, Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Wednesday during the daily White House news conference.
Apart from strengthening economic ties between India and the US, the Russia-Ukraine conflict will be one of the agendas of the talks between the two leaders.
While he is in Tokyo, President Biden will also launch a new and ambitious economic initiative for the region, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which will be a 21st-century economic arrangement, designed to tackle new economic challenges, he said.
The framework, he said, will involve work ranging “from setting the rules of the digital economy to ensuring secure and resilient supply chains to managing the energy transition to investing in clean, modern high standards infrastructure.”
Joe Biden will be joined in person by the Prime Minister of Japan for the launch of IPEF and virtually by leaders from a number of Indo-Pacific partners from down under to southeast Asia to northeast Asia.
“On security and economics, on technology and energy, on investment in infrastructure, we think this trip is going to put on full display President Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy and that it will show in living colour that the United States can at once lead the free world in responding to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and at the same time, chart a course for effective, principled American leadership and engagement in a region that will define much of the future of the 21st century,” Sullivan said.
Before arriving in Japan, Joe Biden is scheduled to travel to South Korea for a summit meeting with its leaders.