Quad leaders: Committed to free, open, secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific region

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 14

The four leaders of the virtual Quad summit on March 12 have jointly penned an op-ed in the Washington Post.

The op-ed dwells on the widened ambit of the grouping apart from its core task of ensuring that the Indo-Pacific is accessible and dynamic, a code for ensuring China does not dominate the maritime zone.

US President Joe Biden along with prime ministers Narendra Modi, Scott Morrison and Yoshihide Suga described the Quad as a group of democratic nations dedicated to delivering results through practical cooperation.

They wrote that just like the Tsunami of 2004, the four countries have been summoned to “act together in support of a region in need” although they did not mention who had summoned them.

The four areas where Quad will work together are climate change that has “grown more perilous”, new technologies have “revolutionised our daily lives”, geopolitics that has “become ever more complex”, and a pandemic that “has devastated the world”.

They reiterated that the Indo-Pacific region must remain free, open, resilient and inclusive. “We are striving, governed by international law and bedrock principles such as freedom of navigation and peaceful resolution of disputes, and that all countries are able to make their own political choices, free from coercion. In recent years, that vision has increasingly been tested. Those trials have only strengthened our resolve to reckon with the most urgent of global challenges together,’’ the leaders wrote.

The Quad leaders pledged to expand and accelerate production in India of safe, accessible and effective vaccines. “We will partner at each stage to ensure that vaccines are administered throughout the Indo-Pacific region into 2022. We will combine our scientific ingenuity, financing, formidable productive capacity and long history of global-health partnership to surge the supply of life-saving vaccines, in close collaboration with multilateral organisations,” they said.

The Quad Vaccine Experts Working Group will bring together scientific leaders from Australia, India, Japan and the US to meet the region’s pressing needs. “And though the pandemic prevents us from meeting in person, we will do so before the end of 2021” they promised while recommitting themselves to an Indo-Pacific region that is “free, open, secure and prosperous”.

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