The US, Japan, India, and Australia are likely to meet for their Quad summit this year in the US instead of India, the rotational chair for this year’s gathering, reported Nikkei Asia. The meeting could take place on September 21 in Wilmington, Delaware, the home city of US President Joe Biden.
This year’s meeting will be the last gathering of the current leaders, with Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announcing to step down.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are expected to travel to the US later this month where the United Nations General Assembly will be convened. Modi may not address the UNGA and would allow External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to speak for India at the annual debate, according to a report by the Times of India.
The Quad meeting will, however, not be held on the sidelines of the UN in New York.
“Once it became clear that this year’s Quad summit would take place in the United States around the U.N. General Assembly, Quad partners consulted and agreed that the U.S. and India would swap host years,” Nikkei Asia reported quoting a source familiar with the preparations.
“This enables President Biden to host the summit in his final year as president, and India to host in 2025, providing an opportunity for Prime Minister Modi to host Quad leaders in India next year,” it added.
India had originally planned to host the Quad Summit in January this year to coincide with the Republic Day. But the offer was declined by the White House over scheduling conflicts with the president’s State of the Union address to Congress.
In the subsequent months, scheduling challenges arose due to elections in both India and the US.
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In July, after Biden announced he would not run for reelection, New Delhi suggested that the summit be held in the US instead. Nikkei Asia reported that a senior White House official said that the Biden administration preferred to hold a stand-alone Quad summit, separate from the UNGA in New York allowing the leaders to engage in the “full agenda” of the Quad partnership.
This year, the Quad will mark its 20th anniversary which began in 2004 as an ad hoc grouping to coordinate disaster response for the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe had proposed institutionalising that gathering as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. The dialogue did not take off as some members were nervous about antagonising China. The Quad was revived a decade later under the former US President Donald Trump in 2017.