Melbourne and manila both wait for Shri S Jaishankar
Shri Jaishankar will participate in the fourth Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in Melbourne on 11 February with foreign ministers from Australia, Japan and the US.
External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday embarked on a visit to Australia and the Philippines to provide correct directional bearing in a meeting of foreign ministers of the Cooperation grouping called Quad, in Melbourne and then will be going to Manila to enhance New Delhi’s growing ties with Manila.
This will be Indian minister’s first visit to both countries since he became the external affairs minister in 2019. The upcoming meeting of the Quadrilateral Group which is certainly not a Security Grouping, as far as India is concerned, thus Jaishankar will be giving it a proper direction for the future.
It is expected that QUAD will focus on the rollout of the grouping’s Covid-19 vaccine partnership. On the other hand visit to the Philippines is certainly a bilateral security partnership. It’s significance is that this Southeast Asian nation became the first foreign customer for the Indian BrahMos cruise missile.
On 28January, India’s BrahMos Aerospace and the Philippines signed a deal worth almost $375 million for the Philippine Marines to acquire three batteries of BrahMos cruise missiles, giving a boost to New Delhi’s efforts to emerge as an exporter of major defence hardware. The visit is expected to impart further momentum to bilateral relations with our key partners in the Indo-Pacific, Australia, and the Philippines, which is also a leading member of ASEAN.
While going to Melbourne, Jaishankar had a stopover in Doha on Wednesday. There he held talks with the deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani. They discussed the “broad based political, economic, digital and security partnership” and exchanged views on global and regional developments, including Afghanistan.
Jaishankar appreciated Qatar’s interest in expanding investment and trade. He also unveiled the foundation stone of a new embassy complex in Doha at an event attended by Al-Thani.
At Melbourne the foreign ministers will review ongoing Quad cooperation and “build on the positive and constructive agenda” announced by the leaders at the two summits in 2021 to address challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, supply chains, critical technologies, climate change and infrastructure, the ministry said.
The discussions are also expected to prepare the ground for the next Quad Leaders Summit to be hosted by Japan in the first half of the year.
Jaishankar and his Australian counterpart Marise Payne will co-chair a foreign ministers’ framework dialogue on 12 February to review the progress of the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership and to discuss bilateral, multilateral and regional issues.
Jaishankar and Payne will also co-chair the first foreign ministers’ cyber framework dialogue. They will assess the progress made in implementing the India-Australia framework arrangement on cyber and cyber-enabled critical technology cooperation and a subsidiary plan of action which they had signed in June 2020 on the sidelines of a virtual leaders’ summit between the prime ministers of the two countries.
Jaishankar is also scheduled to meet Australian political leaders, academics, business people, and the Indian diaspora and students.
From Australia, Jaishankar will visit the Philippines during February 13-15. He will hold talks with his counterpart Teodoro Locsin and review bilateral relations since a virtual meeting of the joint commission on bilateral cooperation in November 2020. They will also discuss regional and international issues.
