Quad Foreign Ministers Meeting

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Australia hosted the third in- person foreign minister’s meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue also known as QUAD in Melbourne on 11 February 2022. Earlier in person foreifn ministers’ meetings were held in Tokyo in October 2020 and the inaugural meeting in New York in September 2019.

The Melbourne meeting was attended by the Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken , Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and the Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payn.

A joint statement was issued after the end of the meeting .The main highlights of the statement were as follows :

• For the  first time the QUAD  mentions the terrorist incident of  2008 Mumbai attack of 26/11 and the attck on Pathankot air base  2016 and   called for bringing the prepartotrs to justice .

• The foreign ministers of India, Australia, Japan and the US reviewed the Quad Vaccine Partnership, which was launched in March last year, during their meeting in Melbourne. The partnership envisages the production of at least 1 billion doses of US-developed vaccines in India with American and Japanese funding. 

• Indian company Biological E is producing corona vaccine developed by  U.S Texas Children’s Hospital scientists Drs Peter Hotez and . Maria Bottazzi. The vaccine is called Corbevax. This vaccine will be supplied to poor countries through Quad Vaccine Partnership. 

• Australia will hold an Indo-Pacific Clean Energy Supply Chain Forum meeting in mid-2022 to establish responsible and resilient clean-energy supply chains

QUAD 

Quad or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is a group of four countries US, Japan, Australia and India. The concept of QUAD was given by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007 for maritime cooperation between these countries after the Indian ocean Tsunami disaster in 2004. 

Now the group is  mainly seen as a group to counter the Chinese influence in the region .

• The first virtual summit meeting of the leader of QUAD  was held in March 2021.

• The First in person summit meeting of the leaders of the four countries  was held by the United States in September 2021 in Washington attended by the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga

• The next summit meeting will be held in Japan in 2022.