New Delhi will host an official-level meeting of the Quad grouping with the U.S., Japan and Australia next week, the first such “Senior Officers Meeting” (SOM) to be held since tensions with China over Taiwan have risen. The Quad SOM meeting slated for September 5-6, is one of a number of meetings to be held between India and its Indo-Pacific partners in the week, seen as part of the government’s “balancing” moves ahead of the SCO summit in Uzbekistan in mid-September. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the SCO summit along with leaders of Russia, China, Pakistan, Central Asia and Iran, the first such in-person summit since the COVID pandemic and beginning of the Ukraine war.
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials will follow the Quad meeting with an India-U.S. 2+2 “inter-sessional” meeting, with U.S. Assistant Secretary of States for South and Central Asia Donald Lu leading the American delegation to discuss bilateral issues. Senior counterparts from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Deputy Secretary Justin Hayhurst, and the Director General of the Foreign Policy Bureau in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Keiichi Ichikawa will attend the meetings on Monday and Tuesday, which will review progress in a number of Quad initiatives that were discussed during the Quad summit in Tokyo in May this year.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will also travel to Tokyo later in the week for an India-Japan “2+2” ministerial meeting. In addition, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal will travel to the U.S. for bilateral trade talks, September 5-10, as well as to attend the third Indo-Pacific Economic Forum ministerial meeting (IPEF) in Los Angeles, which is being held in person for the first time since its launch by U.S. President Joseph Biden in May. The meetings will take place amidst a particularly busy diplomatic calendar, as Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also begins her state visit to India on Monday.
