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The QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) Summit which was slated to be held in India in January, is proposed "to be held later" in 2024, according to sources.
The sources said that revised dates are under consideration as the current ones do not work with all the QUAD partners. "We are looking for revised dates as the dates currently under consideration do not work with all the Quad partners," said the sources. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in May, had announced on the margins of the G-7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, that India would host the next Quad leaders' Summit. The QUAD is the grouping of four democracies -- India, Australia, the US, and Japan -- that aims to ensure and support a "free, open and prosperous" Indo-Pacific region. The forum traces its genesis to 2004 when the four countries came together to coordinate relief operations in the aftermath of the tsunami. In 2007, the group again met on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) sidelines. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was the first to pitch the idea for the formation of Quad in 2007. The Quad summit, which was hosted by Sydney this year in May 2024, was cancelled after US President Biden withdrew from his visit due to ongoing debt limit talks in Washington. However, the leaders of the alliance, later agreed that they would hold their summit in Hiroshima, alongside G7 to ensure that the four leaders could come together to mark the Quad's progress over the past year. Biden scrapped his planned trip to Sydney as well as a historic visit to Papua New Guinea. The decision -- which prompted Albanese to cancel the scheduled Quad summit -- was seen as a self-inflicted blow to hopes of a more visible US presence in the Indo-Pacific amid its competition with China in the region. US President Biden thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for agreeing to participate in the Quad meeting today on the sidelines of the G7 summit here. (ANI)
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