The United States, Australia, Japan and India on Friday pledged to deepen cooperation to ensure the Indo-Pacific region was free from "coercion", a thinly-veiled swipe at China's growing economic and military expansion, as their top diplomats convened to also tackle climate change, COVID and other threats.
Foreign ministers of the so-called Quad, the informal grouping of the four countries, vowed to work on humanitarian relief, terrorism, cyber and maritime security and global supply chain challenges.
