Biden busy, Sydney Quad meet off

New Delhi, May 17

The Quad meeting next week in Sydney has been cancelled, and the leaders will instead meet on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan this weekend, said Australian PM Anthony Albanese after receiving a 4.30 am call from US President Joe Biden expressing his inability to make it due to the deadlock over debt limit in the US.

PM Modi may go ahead with Oz visit

• There is no word from Delhi yet whether PM Narendra Modi will go ahead with the Australian visit
• Mega Indian community event in Sydney, bilateral meet with Australian PM Anthony Albanese are part of schedule
• With preparations on both sides at advanced stage, PM Modi may stick to programme

There is no word from Delhi yet whether PM Narendra Modi will go ahead with the Australian visit which also includes a mega Indian community event in Sydney as well as a bilateral meeting with Albanese. With preparations on both fronts at an advanced stage, PM Modi is most likely to stick to the scheduled three-nation tour programme.

PM Modi is slated to leave for Hiroshima for the G7 meet on May 19. India is among the five developing countries invited to attend some of the deliberations of the G7 summit. A planned interaction with Biden on its sidelines is expected. This is where the four leaders will hold a Quad summit.

The PM will then visit Papua New Guinea (PNG), where he will co-chair the third India-Pacific Island Countries’ (PIC) summit. Biden too was supposed to visit PNG for a separate US-PIC summit. That too has been cancelled. The two leaders were to then go to Sydney where the Australian and the Japanese PMs were to join them for the Quad summit.