India defends Quad amid limited agenda

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Quad has a program that spans multiple areas, much wider cooperation, said S Jaishankar. (To file)

New Delhi:

Ahead of a first in-person meeting convened by US President Joe Biden in Washington later this month, India said Quad should not be seen as a group with a limited agenda because it has a large and substantial agenda.

Speaking to American Academician Ashley Tellis on the Indian Ocean and its impact on regional security, Foreign Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar said: more integrated, the political reflection of all these changes are expressed in Quad. Again, I want to stress that Quad has an agenda that spans multiple areas, much broader cooperation. partly also sort of an attitude and not a full understanding of what is really going on because, as we will see later in the month, I think Quad has a growing agenda and a substantial agenda in multiple spheres of activity . “

Prime Minister Narendra Modi would attend the Quadrilateral Framework Leaders’ Summit in Washington with his US, Japanese and Australian counterparts on September 24.

Mr Jaishankar added: “Without diminishing Quad, which I also wanted to point out that Quad is not limited, there are other plurilaterals in the world. There are other plurilaterals in the Indo-Pacific region. We have a plurilateral which means more than two agreements with Australia and Japan and also with France, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, so this is a larger generic point on evolution. of the international order which, as multilateralism shows an inability to deal with the key issues of the day and as bilateralism has its mixture, I think that the gap today will increasingly be bridged by an understanding of the willful and of the cooperative. “

The Indian Foreign Affairs remarks are important because they come after China criticized Quad and said that the formation of “exclusive cliques” targeting other countries goes against the trend of the time and is “doomed to failure “.

Asked about the fragmentation and unification of the region by the think tank representative, Jaishankar emphasized the cooperation reflected by the Quad nations, he said: “Quad as an example, it is is a cooperative effort, the cooperative effort between four countries located in the four corners of the Indo-Pacific but are all driven by a sense of responsibility. Our duty to a global cause that comforts one another. Each of us went the extra mile, it wasn’t predestined. In fact, recent history was a little different. We have all tried to overcome this approach to global responsibility with a more open mind. There are other efforts that the East Asia Summit and ASEAN add to this.

“In a sense, I would say fragmentation and unification are extreme positions. As so often the best answers are found somewhere in the middle. This is why the middle way embodies so many virtues. For me, finding the right balance to create much more participatory, much more consultative, in a much more coordinated sense, a kind of cooperative Indo-Pacific, ”he added.

Mr Jaishankar said: “A few weeks ago I spoke at some length about how Europe has met these challenges vis-à-vis Asia. The point is that we in Asia are struggling for various reasons. , you’re going to see a lot of it now, what you already see is these efforts. It’s a big region. A very complicated region. It will have many building blocks of all kinds and the good thing is to be open to all. rather than going into a binary with me versus me sort of thing. “

He also said that India had acquired the position of first responder in the Indian Ocean region. He pointed out that the Indian Ocean itself historically had an organic unity which it is very important today for the countries of the Indian Ocean to remember and refresh, it was a very pluralistic culture of the Indian Ocean.

“Considering we have such a great coastline, the vast expanse of ocean below us, so many islands. It is interesting only in 2015, India adopted a comprehensive strategy and it was done when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Mauritius in March 2015, now it is named Sagar. This has created perspectives that transcend bureaucracies and ministerial silos, ”added the Minister.

(Except for the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)

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