External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar will pay an official visit to the United States from 30 June to 2 July at the invitation of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to participate in the next Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (QFMM), scheduled for 1 July, an official said on Sunday.
In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) stated that the Quad Foreign Ministers will build upon the discussions held during the last QFMM, which took place in Washington on January 21 this year.
“They will exchange views on regional and global developments, particularly those concerning the Indo-Pacific, and review the progress made on various Quad initiatives in the run-up to the Quad Leaders’ Summit, which will be hosted by India. The Ministers are also expected to deliberate on new proposals aimed at advancing the shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the MEA statement read.
EAM Jaishankar will also inaugurate an exhibition titled, “The Human Cost of Terrorism” at the United Nations Headquarters, New York on June 30.
“The exhibition will highlight the devastating toll of heinous terrorist acts around the world, and the steps taken by the international community to combat terrorism,” the statement noted.
India’s UN Mission said it will “highlight the devastating toll of heinous terrorist acts around the world”.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will host the upcoming QFMM, which will also be attended by Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Japan’s Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi, next Tuesday in Washington.
Rubio’s first diplomatic engagement after he took office on January 21 was the Quad foreign ministers meeting, which took place a day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated.
Next week’s meeting “builds on that momentum to advance a free, open, and secure Indo-Pacific”, Principal Deputy Spokesperson for the Department of State, Thomas Pigott, said.
“This is what American leadership looks like: strength, peace, and prosperity,” he said.
Earlier, S. Jaishankar posted on X that he had a phone conversation with Penny Wong on Thursday in preparation for the Quad meeting.
The Quad meeting will be the first time the ministers get together after the Pahalgam attack.
It will come a day before Pakistan takes over the rotating presidency of the Security Council.
The Quad meeting is expected to lay the groundwork for the Summit to be hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi which will bring US President Donald Trump, and Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese of Australia and Shigeru Ishiba of Japan to India.
At their meeting in February, PM Modi said he looked forward to hosting Trump at the summit.
The first foreign affairs meeting after Trump’s inauguration showed his administration’s regional priority as China’s threat loomed. However, the world’s attention turned to the Middle East and Ukraine.
The conflict between Israel and Iran appears to have ebbed for now, freeing some bandwidth to turn attention to the Indo-Pacific, where China poses a challenge to the nations of the region.
(IANS)
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