Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed that next week’s Quad leaders meeting in Sydney will not go ahead after US President Joe Biden cancelled his visit to Australia.
All four leaders are likely to instead meet on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Japan this weekend.
Mr Biden has been forced to turn his attention to domestic politics, as he works to hash out a deal with Republicans to prevent the US from defaulting on its debts at the end of this month.
"Because that has to be solved prior to 1 June — otherwise there are quite drastic consequences for the US economy, which will flow on to the global economy — he understandably has had to make that decision," Mr Albanese said.
The prime minister also said Mr Biden was "disappointed" he was unable to come to Australia and that the Quad leaders would instead try to gather on the margins of the G7 leaders meeting in Hiroshima.
"All four leaders — President Biden, Prime Minister Kishida, Prime Minister Modi and myself — will be at the G7, held in Hiroshima on Saturday and Sunday. We are attempting to get together over that period of time [and] I'll have a bilateral discussion with President Biden," he said.
"At this stage, we haven't got a time locked in for that arrangement."
Later in the day, Mr Albanese confirmed India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi would still travel next week to Australia, where he is expected to hold a huge event with the Indian diaspora in Sydney.
"Prime Minister Modi will be here next week for a bilateral meeting with myself," Mr Albanese told ABC Radio in Brisbane.
"He will also have business meetings and will hold a very public event at Homebush at the Olympic site in Sydney.
"He will also be engaging with Australian-India business relations … I look forward to welcoming him to Sydney."
But he indicated Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida would cancel his visit in the wake of Mr Biden's announcement.
"Prime Minister Kishida … was just coming for the Quad meeting. There wasn't a separate bilateral program," Mr Albanese said.
PNG opposition says people 'disappointed'
Mr Biden's announcement has also frustrated Australian officials who have spent months preparing for the landmark summit, as well as fuelling anxieties in Canberra about how political polarisation in the United States is again sapping its international diplomacy.
Mr Albanese has blamed the "blocking and disruption that's occurring in domestic politics in the United States" for the president's decision, in a thinly veiled swipe at Congressional Republicans who have been demanding more spending cuts from the White House during debt ceiling negotiations.
Until the cancellation of his Australia-Papua New Guinea leg of his visit, the US president was planning to travel here with an entourage of more than 1,000 people for a historic visit that was also expected to cause major disruption to Sydney's CBD.
The last visit to Australia by a sitting US president was by Barack Obama in 2014.
Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister James Marape has not yet responded to the US president's announcement, but the country's opposition said many people in PNG would be "disappointed" by the news.
The Pacific nation has already spent lots of time and money preparing to host Mr Biden and his retinue, and Mr Marape had repeatedly hailed the visit as a milestone in his country's history.
